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CHILDREN FOR CHRIST | 
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WINNING THE CEH ER 
FOR CHRIST 





/ EDITED BY 


D. P. ‘THOMSON, M.A. 


Editor of “The Modern Evangelistic Address,’ “Evangelism 
in the Modern World,’ “Twenty Sermons by Famous 
Scotch Preachers,” “The Scottish Pulpit,? etc. 





NEW ” YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 
ea SF ates 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


PREFACE 


In a series of Handbooks of Modern Evangelism it 
is surely eminently fitting that one volume should be 
devoted to work among the children. No field of 
evangelistic endeavour requires to be more carefully 
and thoroughly explored than that afforded by the 
boys and girls growing up in our homes and Sunday 
Schools. They are in every sense the hope of the 
future, and from their ranks not only the pioneers of 
the Kingdom of God in the coming days, but the mem- 
bership of the Church in the next generation must be 
supplied. The interest likely to be taken in a volume of 
this nature is enhanced by the fact that it appears just 
at the time when the great World Sunday School Con- 
vention is meeting in Glasgow, and when attention in 
this country is focussed to an unusual degree on the 
all important work of Winning the Children for Christ. 

The present volume is the third of the series, and 
will be followed in due course by others on The Modern 
Evangelistic Address; Present-day Methods in Evan- 
gelism; The Psychology of Evangelism, and The Min- 
istry of Personal Dealing. As in the previous volumes 
the Editor has sought to allow for the utmost cath- 
olicity of outlook and variety of expression consistent 
with the unity and scope of the subject. Thanks are 
due to Rev. Carey Bonner (who had himself hoped to 


contribute a chapter) and to Messrs. James Kelly and 
Vv 


vi PREFACE 


Ernest H. Hayes for valuable help and suggestions. 
We would gratefully record our indebtedness to these 
and other friends for the assistance they have rendered. 


1B AN spin bs 
GLASGOW. 


INTRODUCTION 


EvANGELIsm finds its finest and most fruitful field 
among the young life of the world, and the readiest 
and most eager response to the appeal of Jesus will 
ever be made by those who stand on the threshold of 
Life. For them the great adventure is only just be- 
ginning and the unknown future is full of dimly-re- 
alised possibilities. As the powers of mind and body 
expand, and the prospect of life in all its many-sided- 
ness begins to unfold, there comes home to the hearts a 
sense of longing, and a consciousness of need, that give 
the evangelist his unique opportunity of presenting 
Christ as the Lord of Life, Who alone can satisfy its 
deepest needs and fulfil its loftiest ambitions, Who is 
worthy of all the passionate devotion and loyalty of 
youth and Who will prove adequate to every demand 
it may make. 

The results of modern psychological research have 
been assimilated and applied with such eagerness and 
wholeheartedness by Christian thinkers and workers, 
that we are in little danger to-day of under-estimating 
either the peculiar problems of the adolescent period, or 
the unique opportunities it presents for effecting far- 
reaching decisions in the sphere of character and 
motive, and for the definite organisation of life round a 
distinctively Christian centre. The winning of the 


adolescent to a vital Christian discipleship is the avowed 
vii 


Vili INTRODUCTION 


aim of a multitude of organisations that have grown 
up under the shadow of the Church within the past 


generation. What is not so generally recognised—and | 


is in fact doubted if not denied by many—is that boys, 
and girls can be won for Jesus Christ before the great 
psychological and physiological changes that mark the 
adolescent period have really made themselves felt. | 
This volume is based on the conviction that the vital 
work of winning the young for Christ cannot safely 
be left till the storm and stress of the adolescent period 
have commenced, and that children of tenderer years 
can be led into a very real experience of the love and 
power of Christ. It may be well to state some of the 
premises on which this conviction rests. 

It is our belief that even children born in a Christian ' 
country, brought up in a Christian Church, and sur-| 
rounded by all the gracious influences of a Christian 


home, need to be won for Jesus Christ—that only by ' 
a conscious and voluntary choice of their own wills — 


can they enter into the full enjoyment of fellowship 
and service in the redeemed family of God. To say 
that such a child needs to be won for Christ is not to 
gainsay the value of a spiritual heritage and a Chris- 
tian upbringing, nor is it to deny the fact that boys and 
girls born into a redeemed world, and consecrated to 
God at birth by believing parents, enjoy unique privi- 
leges and opportunities. It is simply to recognise the 
right of every individual to exercise his powers of judg- 
ment, and to determine the bent of his own character. 
It is to do no more than justice to that power of self- 
determination which the soundest philosophy will not 
allow us to abandon, and which the most scientific 


' 


INTRODUCTION ix 


psychology is forced to recognise. It is to take account 
of what is only too patent to even the casual observer— 
the utter spiritual indifference, the abject moral failure, 
and open and unashamed vice, of many who enjoyed in 
childhood’s years all the privileges of Christian nur- 
ture and upbringing. It is to plead for the child’s right 
of determining his own relationship to Christ when 
he comes to the age of responsibility, and of entering 
into the conscious enjoyment of his Divine inheritance 
by the exercise of his own will. It is to concede his 
equal right to reject the gift of God’s love and refuse 
His proferred grace, if he so determine. 

The writer further cherishes the conviction that boys 
and girls can be won for Christ in childhood, not merely 
that they can be prepared for intelligent and whole- 
hearted decision during the later adolescent period. In 
the later pages of this book evidence will be adduced to 
show that children under fourteen years of age can, 
and do, enter into a very real experience of the presence 
and power of Christ, and give evidence of just as 
genuine and wholehearted a discipleship as many in 
later life. Even the child of comparatively tender years 
is capable of appreciating, in a childlike, but very real 
and exceedingly effective way, something of the beauty 
and moral value of the kind of life Jesus lived, and 
of choosing by an act of will to serve and follow Him. 
And children still younger than this can, and do, learn 
to love the Saviour with all the affection commonly be- 
stowed on a mother or father. It is surely better that,’ 
before the stormy adolescent period comes, the young 
life should be firmly anchored in Christ and committed | 
to His care, than that the frail barque should be thrust. 


x INTRODUCTION 


out on those troubled waters without the firm hand of 
the Heavenly Pilot on the helm, and the inspiring 
leadership of the Great Captain to ensure success in 
life’s great adventure.| Children have their burdens 
and sorrows—often very real and very great—and they 
need a Saviour to share them. They have their hours 
of loneliness and fear, and they need a Friend to help 
them. They have their fight with temptation and sin, 
and only in His strength can they conquer. They often 
lose father or mother, or both, before their journey is 
well begun, and they need the comfort of a Heavenly 
Father’s love and the consciousness of a Heavenly 
Father’s presence. Further, it must be remembered 
that the majority of the human race die in childhood. 
Of the salvation of those who pass away in infancy few 
to-day have any doubt, but what of those who have 
come to an age of responsibility—for whom the moral 
choice has become a reality? Do we not do them 
a grave wrong if, for the brief years of their earthly 
pilgrimage and the dark hours of their last journey, 
we deprive them of the joy and comfort of conscious 
and happy fellowship with Christ, and eager and child- 
like service for Him? Let not the memory of forced 
and unnatural pre-adolescent religious experience blind 
us to the opportunity—nay, to the necessity—of win- 
ning to Christ the boys and girls of tender years. 
‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid 
them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

A resolute attempt must be made to win the children 
of our land for Christ. ‘The best brains in our 
Churches must be given to this task, the most devoted 


INTRODUCTION xi 


and enlightened service must be directed to that 
goal. The Church must realise as never before 
that she is pledged to the winning of the children for 
Christ. It has been well said that—“Only by winning 
the young can the Kingdom be won; only by saving 
the children can the Church itself be saved.”’ It was the 
considered verdict of Dr. John Clifford, the great Free 
Church leader, that the Churches “must arrange their 
whole worship and work, their teaching and preaching, 
their fellowship and ministry, to win and hold in alle- 
giance to Jesus the child and the adolescent.” It is, as 
Lionel B. Fletcher remarked, a great thing to have the 
testimony of a dozen men of 60 redeemed from a 
life of sin and shame, and rejoicing in the Saviour’s 
power, but it is a far, far greater thing to get a dozen 
boys of 12 into real living touch with Christ. The 
testimony of the former is to the power of Christ 
to save from the worst; the lives of the latter will 
witness through the years to the power of the same 
Saviour to keep from sin. No generation can afford 
to forget the dictum of Henry Drummond, that Chris- 
tianity is not simply a religion for rebuilding human 
ruins, but even more emphatically and essentially a 
religion for preventing men and women from ever be- 
coming ruins. If that prevention is to be effective it 
must be ensured in childhood years. The law books 
of to-day are full of statistics of juvenile crime—of 
Court cases in which children of 11 and 12 years are 
the offenders. The psychologists have been forced to 
the conviction that the really formative years belong 
to the preadolescent period and the Church of Jesus 


xii INTRODUCTION 


Christ can no longer afford to remain blind to the op- 
portunities it is losing if it fails to reach out after the 
child and does not seek to win him for Christ. 

Modern Surgery, we are told, “has proved the value 
of caring for child life in the tenderest years, when 
deformities and perversions can often be permanently 
set right, and abnormal developments brought back to 
normal.” Modern Education is pushing back its activi- 
ties to an earlier age and stage in each generation, and 
is even invading the home so that the environmental 
influences may be studied. Modern Evangelism cannot 
afford to lag behind here. If the spiritual side of the 
child be neglected during these years an opportunity is 
lost which will never come again, and incalculable in- 
jury may be done to the growing life. 

The first and greatest responsibthty for the winning 
of the children to Christ rests with the parents. It is 
at once the duty and privilege of Christian fathers and 
mothers to bring their boys and girls into happy and 
wholehearted Christian discipleship, to awaken in their 
young hearts a love for the Saviour that will deepen 
and strengthen with the passing of the years. Few 
parents, alas, realise this, and comparatively few chil- 
dren have the joy of a truly Christian upbringing. 
Parents whose anxiety for their children’s welfare leads 
them to lay good foundations for everything else, never 
seem to realise the necessity for laying the foundations 
of the spiritual life in early years, or, if they do realise 
it, they display a strange reluctance to undertake the 
task themselves and betray a surprising willingness to 
relegate this duty to the Sunday School teacher or the 


INTRODUCTION xiii 


minister. Christian parents who so shirk that respon- 
sibility and forfeit their privilege, lose one of the rarest 
joys of life and store up for themselves a possible 
harvest of misunderstanding and resentment. The 
sweetest and most natural spiritual experiences of chil- 
dren are those induced by a parent’s loving heart and 
words, by the beauty of a father’s life, or the Christ- 
likeness of a mother’s love, and the happiest and most 
truly Christian homes are those where the boys and 
girls are fitted within the sacred circle of the earthly 
family to enter the larger fellowship of the Father’s 
Home. 

Next to the parent the Sunday School teacher has 
the best opportunity of leading the child to Christ. 
Thousands of children in our Sunday School come 
from utterly unchristian homes—hundreds come from 
Christian homes where parents fail in their obligation 
and forfeit their right of winning the young lives for 
Christ themselves. Here, then, is the unique opportu- 
nity of the Sunday School teacher—here his greatest 
joy is to be found. No one outside the circle of the 
home is brought into more intimate or happy relations 
with the child. No one so wins his love and affection; 
and no one can so easily and naturally lead him to the 
Saviour. It is the function of the Sunday School— 
and ought to be its clearly recognised and defined aim— 
not merely to lay the groundwork of a thorough Chris- 
tian education and introduce the young mind to the 
world of spiritual reality, but “to bring every pupil to 
realise a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, a personal 
responsibility for active membership in the Church, 


xiv INTRODUCTION 


and a personal obligation to advance the Redeemer’s 
Kingdom by diligent and consecrated effort.” Any- 
thing short of that is failure. 

Readers will gather from a study of the contents of 
this book that the editors allow a place for the Chil- 
dren’s Evangelist—for the specialist, in making the 
appeal of Jesus Christ to boys and girls outside the 
ordinary work of the Sunday School. The reasons for 
that position are set forth in the concluding chapters 
of the volume. The need for a more educational type 
of evangelism is, we feel, balanced by the need for a 
more definitely evangelistic type of religious educa- 
tion. The one is as great a desideratum and as urgent 
a need as the other. 

It is our conviction that effective educational and 
evangelistic work in this field can only be done by those 
who are prepared to keep abreast of the splendid re- 
search work being done in the field of Child Psychology, 
and that conviction has determined the plan of this 
book. Its basis is at once psychological and historical— 
it rests equally on a child’s idea of the child himself, and 
on the attitude of Christ and His Church to him. It 
seeks to relate the fruits of scientific research on the one 
hand, and practical experience on the other, to the re- 
ligious development of childhood and to the problem of 
child conversion. It strives to afford some guidance to 
the Sunday School teacher in the realisation of his 
more definitely evangelistic aims, and makes some at- 
tempt to deal with the vexed question of evangelistic 
meetings for children and to indicate the nature and 
scope of the fruits of work aimed at—Winning the 
Children for Christ. 


INTRODUCTION XV 


We are keenly aware of the defects of the book, as 
well as of the questions unanswered in these pages, and 
of the difficulties for which no solution is offered, but 
we believe that it represents a useful attempt to grapple 
with one of the most vital questions of the hour, and 
we dare to hope that something of real suggestiveness 
and practical value will be found in its pages. 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
I THE MIND OF THE CHILD 
GeorGE H. Green, B.Litt., B.Sc., Lec- 
turer on Education in the University 
College of Wales, Aberystwyth. 


II THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE . 

J. G. Macxenzir, B.D., Professor of So- 

ciology and Psychology, Paton Congre- 
gational College, Nottingham. 


Ti eoUS AND THE CHILDREN 


Tuomas Paterson, M.A., Minister of 
Renwick United Free Church, Glasgow. 


IV THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 


J. WittiAmMs ButcHer, European Editor 
of the Encyclopzdia of Sunday Schools 
and Religious Education, formerly Sec- 
retary of the Wesleyan Methodist Sun- 
day School Department. 


V THE NORMAL RELIGIOUS DEVEL- 
OPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 
THISELTON Mark, Litt.D., M.Ep., B.Sc., 
Extension Lecturer on Religious Educa- 
tion, Manchester University. 


VI THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVER- 
BOUIN ESE a3). ; : POR RONe IS! 
Aubert D. Betpen, B.D., Minister of 
Crowstone Congregational Church, 
Westcliffe-on-Sea. 


XVii 


PAGE 
21 


39 


62 


73 


85 


[06 


XVili 
CHAPTER 


Vil 


VIII 


atb.< 


XI 


XII 


CONTENTS 


THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AS AN EVAN- 
GELAISINGVAGHNGY )0e yr). 


Ernest H. Haves, Author of “The Child 
in the Midst,” “The Concise Guides,” 
ere: 


THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER AS 
EVANGELIST ; 


W. D. Mitter, M.A., Winter 3 Ruchill 
United Free Church, Glasgow. 


LAB WCASE chOR?) RVANGELASTICG 
MEETINGS FOR CHILDREN... 


D. P. TuHomson, M.A., Editor of “The 
Sunday School in the Modern World.” 


SPECIAL MISSION FOR CHILDREN 


A. W. Burcess, Hon. Secretary of the 
Home Missions Committee, National 
Sunday School Union. 


THE CONDUCT OF Steer a 
MEETINGS . 


D. P. THomson, M.A. 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC 
WORK AMONG CHILDREN... 


One of the Editors. 


PAGH 


116 


130 


143 


155 


165 


184 


WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST | 


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CHAPTER I 
THE MIND OF THE CHILD 
GEORGE H. GREEN, B.Lirtr., B.Sc. 


THE fact which we tend to emphasise to-day, perhaps 
more than at any other time in history, in connection 
with the mind of the child, is the fact of development. 
The mind of the child, that is to say, has not merely 
to grow in order to resemble the mind of the adult; but 
has to pass through a whole series of changes. 

The difference between mere growth and development 
may perhaps be illustrated by reference to a single point 
which is of great importance to those who deal in any 
way with children. It is still considered by many people 
that if a matter be expressed in simple words which the 
child is in the habit of using, the matter becomes clear 
to the child. This is no doubt partly true. But we are 
inclined to forget that the simplest words have not the 
same meaning for the child that they possess for the 
adult, and that they cannot possibly possess such mean- 
ing until the child has passed through a number of ex- 
periences which can come to him only with the passing 
of time. This is true even of such words as “father,” 
“home,” “money,” or “food.” Whenever we say that 
something “means more” to us than it does to others, 
we imply that we have passed through experiences 
which these others have not undergone, and that we are, 


in certain directions, more developed than they. 
21 


22 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


Work with children, therefore, whatever may be its 
character, depends for its success upon the understand- 
ing and adoption of, not merely the child’s vocabulary, 
but the child’s point of view. 

The point of view depends upon experience, and 
this again upon the surroundings in which the child 
finds himself. Such simple words as those already 
referred to possess quite different meanings for the 
child who lives in a mansion and the one who is brought 
up inaslum. A lesson or a talk about home, given 
simultaneously to two children so differently reared, 
would produce quite different results, since what is con- 
veyed to each child depends for its effect upon the 
already existing meaning of the terms employed. Ob- 
vious as this is when stated, it is in practice often 
ignored. 

When we speak of the child’s environment, however, 
we must not think of a big and complex world which 
surrounds the child, and in respect of which he is 
passive. Even the environment of the adult is not of 
this character. We do not know, we do not even attend 
to all that surrounds us. To some of our surroundings 
we react a great deal; to others much less. Much that 
is about us we completely ignore. We speak of great 
or little interest, or of indifference. 

The direction of interest changes a great deal at 
different periods of life. For example, there is a time 
in a boy’s life when he is quite indifferent to girls; and 
another in which he is intensely interested in them. 
There are periods in which girls are more deeply in- 
terested in their dress and personal appearance than at 
others. 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 23 


It may be well, in discussing the mind of the child, 
to consider it from the point of view of interest, since 
it is to existing interests that all who attempt to win 
the child in any way whatsoever must appeal. We may 
regard development as implying, in the main, that at 
different periods of life different interests predominate, 
so that what will stir the child profoundly at one period 
will move him but little in another. 

The study of the interests of men and women has 
given rise to the conception of instincts, some of which 
we find operating soon after birth, whilst others come 
into prominence at later stages of life. An instinct im- 
plies interest in a certain object or class of objects, a cer- 
tain kind of behaviour independent of learning or ex- 
perience towards such objects and the experiencing of 
feeling of a certain kind as such behaviour continues 
satisfactorily towards its end. Thus, in connection 
with the instinct of hunger, food is the appropriate 
object—in the human infant, the mother’s breast—and 
sucking the natural activity. As the action goes on, 
the unpleasant craving is replaced by pleasurable feel- 
ings, and ultimately by the feeling of satisfaction. 

There is no general agreement amongst psychologists 
as to the number of instincts, or as to the way in which 
we are to classify them. We may, however, easily 
recognise hunger, sex, flight, curiosity and self-asser- 
tion. | 

In the first three years of life the hunger instinct is 
the most important which comes into play. At first, 
there are no interests at all outside of food, and the 
baby who is not feeding sleeps. 

But we may see, even so early as this, the operation 


24 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


of the combative instinct. We have but to attempt to 
separate the baby from the breast or the bottle, and we 
shall witness struggles to push away the obstacles we 
interpose and to regain the desired object. 

Our instincts make their presence known to us as 
impulses from within. The child wants to feed, and 
knows how to feed, long before he knows why he must 
feed, and this state of things is essential to his life. 
Experience teaches him a great deal and enables him in 
the end to know something of feeding, so that he is able 
to learn that some kinds of food suit him, some disagree 
with him, that some he likes and some he dislikes. He 
learns to control feeding and to reduce it to habit and 
routine. 

The study of the hunger instinct is very illuminating 
in respect of the light thrown by it upon the process 
of transformation of instinctive activities into adult 
conduct. The object of interest is food. But since 
food<becomes associated with pleasant flavours, with 
cutlery, glass and napery, with congenial company and 
good conversation, some part of the interest, and often 
the greater part, is transferred to these. A man may in 
time prefer remaining hungry to dining alone, or to 
dining in discomfort. Or again, certain experiences 
may have taught the value of food; as the man ina 
desert land learns that he must spare no effort, if he 
values his life, to push on to the lands where food is to 
be discovered. It was because he was speaking to an 
audience for whom food had acquired a definite mean- 
ing that Christ was able to refer to “they who hunger 
and thirst after righteousness,” and to be certain of 
being understood by them in a way that would have 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 25 


been impossible to people who had never experienced 
intense hunger and thirst, or known the need of intense 
effort if starvation were to be evaded. Ina land where 
food was scarce and hard to come by, the phrase ‘““Man 
shall not live by bread alone’ possessed an intenser 
meaning than is possible of realisation by the bulk of 
men and women in Great Britain to-day. 

It is true that we make little attempt to appeal to 
the child of under three years of age through the 
medium of words, but it is not to be imagined on this 
account that the period is of little importance. It is, on 
the other hand, perhaps the most important period of 
the child’s life, since he is laying the foundations of all 
his future conceptions of love and duty, with which his 
whole moral and religious development will be in- 
timately concerned. Broadly speaking, his mother rep- 
resents love and his father duty—but this distinction 
must not be pressed too far. In this period, too, the 
child learns something of acting or refraining from 
action for reasons connected with other people. If he 
acts in certain ways he will be praised by people whom 
he has learned to love; if he refuses to act in these ways 
he will be punished—the form of the punishment and 
its relation to the offence depending upon the father and 
mother. The demands we make upon the child of three 
are few, and the punishments and rewards he receives 
are very insignificant in our eyes. But they are none 
the less important for him. 

Perhaps the first signs we discover that the child is 
developing are those which indicate that he is “taking 
notice” of things. These tell us that the satisfaction of 
hunger does not now absorb the whole of his waking 


26 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


interest. By the time that he is three years of age, the 
hunger instinct has been developed beyond the instinc- 
tive stage. The child knows how and when and what 
to eat. He has formed reasonably regular habits of 
sleeping. The greater part of his interest is free to be 
directed elsewhere. 

It seems now to be directed upon himself, and he 
enters upon a stage of development which we can speak 
of as purely selfish. It is folly to deplore this, and 
more than folly to seek to make it otherwise. St. Paul 
does not advise us to expect from a child other than 
childish things. We may deplore the concentration of 
interest upon the self in the adult, who should have 
passed through and beyond this stage, but not in the 
child, who learns as he passes through it to know him- 
self. Excessive praise just now may lead to grandiose 
ideas about himself. Indifference and neglect may lead 
him to underestimate himself. In either of these ways 
we may lay the foundations of excessive self-conscious- 
ness, the personal deficiency which troubles so many 
men and women in later life, making some arrogant be- 
cause they believe themselves to be inferior people, who 
must demonstrate their superiority by disproportionate 
efforts; and others shy and diffident, because they feel 
that they cannot demonstrate by any efforts they make 
the superiority which they believe themselves (perhaps 
unwittingly) to possess. 

It is at this stage that the child shows a great in- 
terest in the toy, the plaything; and it is his interest 
which makes the toy so worth while to him. But the 
ball he strikes and pursues, the little cart he pulls, the 
toy train he directs, are all of them objects through 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 27 


which he learns something of his increasing powers. 
Simply and naturally he boasts of what he is able to do 
with the toys, and of their possession. He speaks of 
“my toys.” He invites favoured adults to “see how far 
I can throw my ball.” 

It is in this period, then, that the child acquires an 
interest in those things which a human being is able 
to do and to know; and this because he has set his mind 
on being able to do and to know all these things him- 
self. A frequent form of question is “When I am 
grown up like you, shall I be able.to drive a motor- 
car?’ Consequently, it is not surprising that, in the 
earliest phases of this period, the father is admired as 
a person who knows everything and is able to do every- 
thing. He is admired, and he is imitated. The imita- 
tion is in the main confined to superficial matters, since 
the child’s powers of analysis are very limited. The 
father’s hat and coat may be borrowed, his mannerisms 
of speech and gesture more or less accurately copied. 
Fathers who leave pipes about will find at some time 
or other one of their children diligently sucking at the 
stem of an unlighted pipe, endeavouring to appreciate 
the experience of being grown up. _ 

Any effort we make, therefore, to.attract the child’s 
interest at this stage must be conditioned by the fact 
that his interest already centres about himself. He 
wants to know something of his own origin, of his own 
past and future . . . of the things that he will be able 
to do in the days when he shall be grown up. Other 
children interest him in the main because they are like 
himself. Though we speak of other children as his 
friends, we must bear in mind constantly that the child 


28 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


has not the capacity for friendship as the adult under- 
stands it. His friends are the people who give him 
various things, who assist him in various ways, who 
pay attention to him, who are willing to watch him 
perform the feats of which he is proud, to play with him 
under his direction. In the earlier phases of the stage 
of development of which we are speaking, the child in- 
vents an “Imaginary Companion,’ or even a number 
of such, to whom he talks and with whom he plays. 
Any study of the imaginary companion reveals that it is 
in the main composed of wishes for himself which the 
child cannot realise fully in the real world. The com- 
panion does not express merely a wish for companion- 
ship on the part of the child, but wishes for a com- 
panion of a particular kind; one who is willing to ad- 
mire, to assist. Only rarely could a real child take the 
place of the imaginary companion.* 

The child has a background of experience which 
enables the story of the contrasted attitude of some of 
the disciples and that of Jesus Himself to be at once 
appreciated. Every child has met with people who can- 
not be bothered with him, who wish him to be seen and 
not heard, who tell him to go away somewhere where 
he will be able to play without disturbing people. And 
he has generally met a few people who seem never too 
busy to attend to him, to see the things he brings to 
show them, and to listen to what he has to say. His 
deep interest in himself has led him to feel keenly about 
these different types of people, so that he dislikes the 


* The imaginary companion is discussed in the following books. 
Green—Psycho-analysis in the Classroom, and Green—The Day- 
dream: A study in Development. 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 29 


former as strongly as he likes the latter. His interest 
and his experience, then, at this stage, enable him very 
definitely to group Jesus with the people he likes. The 
few episodes of the boyhood of Jesus, or stories of 
Jesus as a man, actually performing deeds which the 
child wishes to perform, make their appeal on the same 
grounds. 

It has, in the past, been customary to tell these narra- 
tives, and then to endeavour to impress a moral. The 
method does not take into account the mind of the 
child, but is based entirely upon conceptions of the 
adult mind. If we are to win the child, we must take 
into account his interests and his stage of development, 
as they are, not as we might foolishly wish them to be. 
We shall choose our occasions. We shall not, at a mo- 
ment when the child has been punished for some child- 
ish fault, and is full of rebellious feelings, talk to him 
of the restriction of the love of Jesus to the good 
child . . . committing an error which is committed 
daily by many who deal with children. But occasions 
may be chosen, and stories may be presented in such 
a way that the child makes for himself the discovery— 
“Then He was just like me.” Or he says—“I want to 
be like that.” Such a discovery, or such a formulation 
of an aim, has a far greater value when it is made by the 
child himself, than when we make it for him. It has 
the further value for ourselves that it ensures us that 
we have succeeded in our aim. The man who talks to 
passive children never knows how much attention he 
is receiving from them, the extent to which he is under- 
stood, or the results of his teaching. 

A great deal has been written of the child’s imitative 


80 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


tendencies at this age. The child who discovers that 
the people he loves maintain an attitude of reverence 
towards certain objects, practise certain forms of 
devotion and follow certain habits of worship, is con- 
stantly stimulated to imitate at least the outward forms 
of acts that are religious in character. In this matter, 
he is best left to himself; being neither unduly stimu- 
lated or discouraged. Such imitation should be taken 
for granted. Often, however, people are inclined to 
imagine that these imitated actions imply more than 
they actually mean. It is wisest to regard them as 
expressions, not of the wish to worship, but of the wish 
to be in all respects like the people whom the child loves 
and admires. They are not religious, in all probability, 
but are of a piece with the child’s other actions in which 
he tries to copy adult behaviour. But they are of value 
in that they have directed his attention to certain acts, 
whose significance he will come gradually to know. In 
proportion as these acts come to possess meaning, they 
will become religious to an increasing degree. 

It is of the very greatest importance that such imita- 
tion shall not be made a subject of remark. Extrava- 
gant praise, unrestrained expressions of pleasure by 
adults who entirely misunderstand what it is that the 
child means by such actions, lead to a complete mis- 
apprehension on the part of the child of what it is that 
is admired and praised. He comes to believe—as 
apparently many of the Pharisees believed—that reli- 
gion is nothing more than the performance of certain 
actions in order to gain the praise of other people, and 
in particular, of those people who are placed in positions 
of authority. The child who merely imitates older 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 31 


people has often enough been taken for a religious 
prodigy ; the result being the later disillusionment of the 
people who unwisely hoped for so much from the child, 
and permanent injury to his own religious development. 

Closely bound up with this matter of imitation is 
the whole question of suggestibility. All of us, children 
and adult alike, are suggestible in some measure. Cnhil- 
dren are, however, in general more suggestible than 
adults. To say that a person is suggestible means that 
he is likely to accept uncritically and to act upon con- 
clusions which are supplied to him by others, expressed 
in their speech or implied in their actions. The fact that 
a number of people whom he loves or admires prepare 
to go to church on Sunday morning suggests to the 
child that he would like to go also. The sight of a 
crowd of people waiting to enter a building makes him 
wish to enter it. 

Suggestions depend for their effect upon the source 
from which they come to us. They depend upon our 
attitude towards this source. If suggestions are made 
by people who enjoy our confidence, whom we love or 
esteem or admire, they are more likely to be accepted 
uncritically than when they come from people who repel 
us or to whom we are hostile. For most people, too, 
suggestions are more effective when they are repeated, 
or when they come from a large number of people. 
When the suggestion is made by many people we speak 
of it as a massive suggestion. When it is made by 
some one who is admired or loved we speak of it as 
depending upon the prestige of the person making it. 

The child’s endeavour to reproduce religious be- 
haviour depends in part upon the number of people who 


82 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


surround him who act in these particular ways. Their 
actions go to make up a mass suggestion. Then again, 
these people possess prestige in the child’s eyes. The 
suggestions which come from the family and the home 
are therefore very strong ones; possessing a double 
character which makes them more than ordinarily 
effective. 

The question of prestige leads rapidly to the con- 
clusion that before we can hope to win a child for any 
‘ cause we have at heart we must first win him ourselves. 
We cannot win him by threats, or by making him 
afraid. Nor can we merely win him by telling ourselves 
that we love him. Time spent in playing with a child, 
in helping him in those directions in which he wishes 
for assistance, in endeavouring to understand a point 
of view, is not wasted; indeed, it is essential that time 
should be so spent. Many adults who know that it is 
essential to woo a woman if she is to be won never 
realise that it is as essential to woo a child as a pre- 
liminary to winning it. 

This does not in the least imply that an adult is to 
play at being a child. A man does not woo or win a 
woman by pretending to be a woman. Manliness in 
this instance serves him better than any pretence of 
femininity. The adult who wins the child does so by re- 
maining an adult; but he endeavours to understand the 
child. He wishes strongly to know his point of view 
and the direction of his interests. For the childish adult 
the child has a great deal of contempt. The actions of 
people for whom the child has dislike or contempt act 
as counter-suggestions: the child receives them, per- 
haps not critically, but with marked disapproval, and 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 33 


generally acts contrary to them. Hatred of religion is 
often directly traceable to the fact that religion was 
associated in early childhood with Pen who were 
strongly disliked. 

We may perhaps contrast this period, in which the 
child is strongly ego-centred, with that which appears 
to follow, in which he shows a great deal of capacity 
for comradeship. From the tenth year to perhaps the 
fifteenth or the sixteenth he is very interested in com- 
panions and with tasks which may be carried out co- 
operatively. The difference between utilising others to 
carry out one’s own plans and sharing with them in 
the performance of a course of action directed towards 
a common end is very great. It is in this stage that 
the child comes to understand the meaning of what we 
are accustomed to speak of as brotherhood. 

Comradeship gives a richer and fuller meaning to 
_the conception of love which the child has already 
gained as a result of his experience of the world and 
of others. In the first three years his love is almost 
purely animal, extending to those people upon whom 
he relies for food and comfort. Such “cupboard” love 
is not a high form of love, but it is the utmost of which 
the child is capable at this stage. From this he passes 
to a love which is still not a high form, but which is 
extended to those people who are, speaking generally, 
of use to him. But in this third stage we reach some- 
thing that is far higher—love of the comrades whose 
play and tasks he shares. It is this particular develop- 
ment of interest that was realised by the founder of 
the Scout movement, the success of which is adequate 
testimony to the soundness of the psychological prin- 


384 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


ciples on which it was based. The Scout and Guide 
movements do not call on boys and girls to sit passively 
and look and listen; but call on them to act together, 
since it is only in connected action that comradeship can 
be experienced and enjoyed. 

The subsequent stage of development, which we 
know as adolescence, has been fully treated by a num- 
ber of writers; notably by Stanley Hall. Typically it is 
a romantic period, in which youth dreams wonderful 
dreams. The concept of love is extended by the idea of 
devotion and sacrifice. The period is one of great and 
often lofty enthusiasms. | 

This very brief review of the development of the 
child from infancy to the early stages of manhood or 
womanhood will serve to make clear the fact of the 
difference between children who are living in different 
stages of development. It is quite true that the child 
is surrounded by precisely the same world as is the 
adult, but it is nevertheless not true to say that the 
child and the adult live in the same world. Each sees 
it differently, because the interest of each is differently 
directed. Each asks questions of it and about it, and 
the questions are entirely different. The question 
“Who made the world?” is a very different one from 
“Why is the world made so?” . . . just as “Who made 
me?” bespeaks a very different outlook from “Why was 
I ever born?” Both are expressions of curiosity, but 
curiosity directed through interest to entirely different 
aspects of existence. 

We have already spoken of instincts, of spontaneous 
activities directed towards certain objects—of hunger 
and its connection with food, of fear and its connection 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 35 


with big and overwhelming objects, of self-assertion 
and its association with objects that may be handled, of 
combativeness and its association with objects which ob- 
struct other instinctive activities. During all the 
periods of development which we have discussed, we 
see these instincts undergoing modifications. 

Our interest is transferred from the original objects 
to others. Or we learn something of the effects pro- 
duced by our actions and so begin to act reasonably 
and intentionally, to modify our actions, and so to 
emancipate ourselves to some extent from our impulses. 
Or again, we learn something of the pleasure which we 
feel in connection with certain activities, and modify 
our activities in order to produce more pleasure for 
ourselves. 

The view that has here been taken of development 
is that in any one of the several stages of development 
a single instinct is predominant in the life of the child; 
and that, in the course of development, this instinct 
becomes known through experience, through work 
and play, and becomes controlled. But at each stage 
interest is directed differently so that we may speak of 
the child’s interest being directed successively towards 
food and people who are associated with his food; to- 
wards himself, his activities and people who are useful 
in connection with these; towards comrades and the ex- 
cursions and activities shared with them and finally, 
towards a single companion with whom he contem- 
plates sharing all his possessions, his thoughts, and to 
whom he proposes to devote all his achievements. 
People who have attempted to win children in the past 
have succeeded just so far as they have succeeded in 


36 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


relating themselves and the things they love to these 
interests of the child. 

The problem of winning a child is not the same as 
that of instructing him. More obviously than is the 
case with adults, the child’s attitude towards things 
and people depends upon the way in which he feels 
about them. Adults have to force themselves in some 
measure to atiend to things they do not like and to 
perform tasks which do not interest them. But even 
so, attention wanders, and the unloved task is set aside 
at the earliest possible moment. Thought is controlled 
by interest. The child who listens to the story of the 
Gadarene swine is likely at the end to ask what the 
owners of the pigs said when they were told of their 
loss, since he is much more interested in the question of 
possession, which immediately affects a child who 
frequently disputes with brothers and sisters the owner- 
ship of toys, than in any other which arises out of 
the narrative. But a story of Jesus which shows Him 
as engaged in the work of healing or preaching, of 
feeding multitudes of people, of wandering homeless 
and weary, of entering Jerusalem in triumph, will cer- 
tainly fascinate the child, since all these things are of 
interest. In the child’s thoughts, as he thinks the mat- 
ter over, he puts himself in the place of Christ, and 
imagines himself acting in precisely this manner ; since 
children invariably identify themselves with the heroes 
of their imaginings. It is important not to enter into 
long, unwanted explanations of stories at their close, 
nor to ask numerous questions to discover how much 
the child has been attending. If the child has been 


THE MIND OF THE CHILD 37 


attending at all, and if the story has in the least cap- 
tured his imagination, he will ask questions about it, 
and will enter upon discussions. “But why did Christ 
allow the men to beat him?” is the sort of question 
that is at once asked, at the end of the narration of the 
events immediately prior to the crucifixion, and it 
tempts the adult to an explanation of the doctrine of the 
atonement, which the child will not in the least under- 
stand. The retort, “What would you have done?” 
will do a great deal more to maintain the interest that 
has evidently been aroused. The child replies with the 
statement, “I would have killed them:” or something 
very similar. “But why?’ The child will volunteer 
a statement to the effect that such people should be 
punished, and at this point it is possible to tell him 
that Christ did not want them punished and to refer 
to the words . . . “Father, forgive them. They know 
not what they do.” We have led the child, through his 
own interests, and along the path of his own thoughts 
to a point at which Christ is presented to him in a 
fuller light than before. The child has already re- 
alised the possibility of loving those who are kind to 
him, and has been able to understand that Christ might 
well be expected to do so too. But we have helped him 
to realise that in this matter Christ goes beyond him, 
much as the people he admires go beyond him in other 
respects. And I believe that we have achieved this 
much more effectively than we could have done by 
means of an exposition following on the story. I well 
remember that when, as a boy, I used to read tracts and 
religious stories I always skipped the doctrinal perora- 


88 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


tion. The few IJ read I have forgotten, though I re- 
member in some detail a very large number of the 
stories. 

The child’s mind, like its body, develops through 
exercise. The child who merely listens is not mentally 
active in respect of what is told, but is generally day- 
dreaming in other directions. The person who can 
capture the child’s attention, who can stir him to won- 
der, who can lead him to feel and think deeply and in- 
tensely, is a person who, because he loves the child and 
sympathises with him, is able to appeal directly to 
his interest and to lead it out beyond those things 
with which it is ordinarily occupied. I believe that in 
the past we have in general paid insufficient attention to 
the importance that feeling plays in the mental life of 
the child, and in particular to the importance of the 
feeling with which certain people and certain actions are 
invested as a result of the experiences of the early years 
of life; the feelings which are fundamental in con- 
nection with conceptions of love and duty} It is these 
feelings and their later development, which determine 
the subsequent attitude towards persons, and conse- 
quently affect very profoundly the problem of winning 
the child. 


CHAPTER II 
THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 
J. G. MACKENZIE, B.D. 


“ADOLESCENCE,” says Dr. McCurdy, “‘is the period dur- 
ing which people of either sex are apt to become keenly 
aware of their sexual and other problems. For this 
reason most patients date their ‘nervousness’ from this 
time ; but any one who goes beneath the surface of such 
phenomena sees that adolescence is merely the time 
when the faulty preparation for life becomes dra- 
matically evident, the causative factors lying far be- 
hind.” 

Dr. McCurdy is here thinking of neurotic patients 
suffering from one or other of the many nervous func- 
tional disorders, as Hysteria, Obsessions, Phobias, etc. 
But his dictum applies equally to those who have failed 
to win a moral or spiritual life. All neurotic trouble has 
its roots in some failure in psychological adjustment 
which in the great majority of cases goes back to early 
childhood. Adolescence is the time for religious and 
moral decisions, not because some wholly new factor 
is brought to bear on the growing young men and 
women but because at that period the early impressions, 
moral and spiritual, manifest their natural expression. 

There is no greater fallacy about the formative 
years than that which holds the adolescent period to be 


the most important. Recent study has drawn de- 
39 


40 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


served attention to the earlier years, especially to those 
between three and ten. The study of the delinquent and 
unstable child in the psychological clinics, and the study 
of the abnormal adult by the psychotherapist show con- 
clusively that the roots of abnormal behaviour must be 
traced to those early years. Dr. Pfister’s recent work 
on “Love in Children” gives numerous examples of 
“Moral Disease’ arising in the early repression or per- 
version of the instincts through the thwarting of the 
love sentiment. 

All this is quite easily understood when one remem- 
bers that the instincts of the child are first in the field. 
Long before the child can rationally or morally judge 
an action the instinctive energies are finding outlet 
almost unimpeded at first. This brings pleasure and 
naturally the desire to repeat the experience. Habits 
are acquired and tendencies indulged which, to a child, 
have no moral content; but in later years these habits 
and tendencies may come under the ban of conscience or 
society. But this time they may have become “com- 
pulsive”’ and outside the control of the child’s will. He 
lies, steals ; indulges in perverted habits; and yet mourn 
over it as he will he cannot better himself. He may 
have little idea why he lies or steals; neither brings him 
any conscious good. He is suffering from “moral 
disease,’ and is unconsciously motived by some re- 
pressed emotion. When the adolescent gives way to 
evil habit it is because in the earlier years there has been 
faulty development. 

The formative years, then, begin at the beginning. 
From the first the infant is active and not passive. 
Every mother and nurse knows how quickly an infant 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE AY 


learns that in response to its crying it gets lifted up, and 
made comfortable. Soon the child comes to cry when 
there is nothing wrong; it wants to get lifted up! Thus 
the child early begins associating its actions with their 
results. It is not meant that the babe has any clear 
ideas; but in some vague way it can associate crying 
and being lifted up. 

The above is a simple illustration of one of the 
formative processes of behaviour. From the beginning 
the child is organising its experience tawards behaviour. 
Every expression will bring back some impression; 
and the impression will determine the repetition, modi- 
fication or inhibition of that expression. 

The starting points of conduct are within the child. 
They lie in what are spoken of as the instinctive dispo- 
sitions. A child does not need to be taught to suck; 
we teach him to play particular games, but he does not 
learn to play; he plays spontaneously. As he gets older 
he begins to assert himself; to feel shy; to be inter- 
ested in other children; to be pleased with and to desire 
praise or recognition. Curiosity early impels the child 
to observe strange objects, and, when he is old enough, 
to ask all manner of “whys” and “hows.” The growing 
boy may become one of a “gang’’; the adolescent begins 
to think of sex. Play, assertion, shyness, desire of 
recognition, curiosity, a liking for the “gang,” sex in- 
terest, are all forces lying behind behaviour. These are 
innate tendencies within the child urging him to the 
kinds of behaviour these terms describe. A normal 
child exhibits all these tendencies. He expresses him- 
self through them; it is by the expression of these that 
he comes into contact with his environment; and the 


42 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


impressions he receives help greatly to determine what 
he will seek from the world. All his early experience 
is organised round these instinctive centres. With 
these he starts out to achieve character and personality. 

The problem of character, we may say, is the prob- 
lem of adjusting instinctive dispositions to moral and 
spiritual reality. Failure to achieve character, or a 
spiritual life, is always the outcome of refusal to become 
adjusted, or of some maladjustment to reality. The 
fundamental characteristic of our Lord’s life from the 
psychological point of view was unity. His desires 
were at one with His moral and spiritual ideals—“TI and 
my Father are one;” His will, the direction of all His 
tendencies, were in the same line as the demands of 
God’s will. “The prince of this world cometh and 
findeth nothing in Me;” there was no desire, no motive, 
no active interest in His being to which the evil of 
this world could appeal. His inner interests and tend- 
encies were unified and organised round His Father’s 
Kingdom; and His love of the Father created that 
affective unity which is the fundamental fact of moral 
and spiritual life. | 

Now what are the fundamental realities to which the 
individual must become adjusted if he is to win a 
moral and spiritual life? Here we need only mention 
three. é 

Very early in life the child comes up against society.” 
This is the reality which is for ever checking and re- 
straining his instinctive activities. It meets him first 
of all in his home. It imposes its will upon him; his 
actions must conform to the will of the members of 
that home else there is restraint and punishment. Later 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 43 


it is the society of his school and school-mates. He 
does something which the society of the school disap- 
proves and he is sent to “Coventry.’’ Later still he 
finds society surrounds him; there is a public opinion 
about all sorts of conduct; conventions that society 
expects him to obey; laws relating to his conduct in re- 
lation to others, the breaking of which mean social 
punishment. Somehow if he is to get any peace he 
must come to terms with this society. He must become 
adjusted to living with others. He must accept its re- 
straints, or circumvent them, or be restless and un- 
happy under them. 


At puberty and adolescence the growing youth and 


maid become acutely conscious of sex stirrings. It is 
not a mere matter of sex curiosity; there are definite 
physiological and psychological processes occurring in 
both; and they simply can’t help sex thoughts and feel- 
ings. Sex is one of the greatest moral realities the 
adolescent has to face. He or she will be fortunate if 
nothing has happened in earlier years to make the 
problem harder. An attitude has to be adopted to the 
whole of their sex nature and its implications if he 
or she is to reach a moral life. Is it of the devil or of 
God? License, control or repression will depend on 
the answer. 

Finally he comes up against the spiritual reality of 
God. He finds that the restraints of society are said 
to have a religious sanction; that moral demands are 
said to be God’s will. Moreover, he finds the moral 
conflict within himself and the need for decision. Psy- 
chologically there is much more that leads to ideas of 
God than the moral conflict, but the idea of God with 


.* 


44 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


some of its implications at least arises in this way and 
he feels the demand for adjustment. 

These are the three ultimate moral realities to which 
every growing personality has to become adjusted if 
the moral and spiritual life is to be achieved. The 
formative years are spent in preparing to become ad- 
justed or maladjusted. In so far as we become adjusted 
to these realities life becomes a joy. We shall deal with — 
the meaning and attainment of these adjustments as 
we proceed. 


DAWN OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 


Although from the very beginning of conscious life 
character-forming forces are at work within and upon 
the child, the first great formative period is the dawn 
of self-consciousness. It takes place between three and 
four years of age. Up to this age the child has known 
no restraint except what has been imposed on him from 
without. He has lived in the moment; he has been 
driven by the passing desire; attracted by the present 
or promised sensation; indeed he has scarcely realised 
that he is a separate being. 

With self-consciousness all this is changed. He re- 
alises that he is an individual with desires of his own, 
a “mind” of his own, a “will” of his own. He can con- 
ceive past, present, and future: “Mamma, me was 
naughty yesterday, me going to be good to-day.” He 
is now able to compare his conduct according to some 
kind of standard. Conscience has awakened; he knows 
good and evil; he has passed from the Garden of Eden. 

Another psychological factor which comes into active 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 45 


power at this time is what Shand and McDougall have 
called the “Sentiment.” Before self-consciousness the 
child was drawn to objects by its innate interest in 
them; but the child may now make these objects the 
end of conscious striving. These various objects 
organise his inner energies round them; they give direc- 
tion to his energies; they determine which desires will 
be indulged, which satisfied. He seeks his Mamma, but 
he knows he seeks her; he may now love his Mamma, 
which before self-consciousness was impossible. The 
good of his Mamma may now become a motive of be- 
haviour. It is the sentiments which control the in- 
stincts; they imply interests which may become per- 
manent; they determine character; indeed they are 
character. 

With the sentiment is born Will, in both the psy- 
chological and ethical sense. Up to this time the child 
has no will. The “self-willed” child is just a child with 
certain of its instincts over-developed. Will pertains 
to sentiment and the striving of the personality as a 
while. In will the energy of many instincts may be 
organised on behalf of one object. As the number of 
objects increase in which the child takes a permanent 
interest the character becomes stable, has direction, and 
in the true sense is will-controlled. ‘There is only one 
way of giving a child will-power; it is by strengthening 
and increasing his permanent interests. 

It is also at this period that the sense of “status” is 
born. The child, conscious of self, is at the same time 
conscious of others and its position in relation to 
others. It innately demands status in the home; then 
in the school, etc. The refusal of this demand lies be- 


46 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


‘hind the behaviour of many a delinquent. What the 
Psycho-analyst calls an “Inferiority Complex” is often 
created by the conscious or unconscious denial of status 
on the part of the parent or teacher. 

There are other factors coming into play at this 
period which determine social, ethical and religious 
attitudes. A sense of justice becomes conscious at this 
time. Whatever claim a child makes for himself he, 
by the self-same thought, makes it for the other child; 
“Ego and Alter are only the same thought with different 
connotations.” “Whatever I fancy for self in general, 
with no qualification as to which self it is, remains the 
same whether afterwards I do qualify it by the word 
‘my or by the word ‘YOUR, Whether the ‘you’ or 
‘me’ will prevail in any particular child will depend 
very largely on early training. When a child refuses 
to grant the claim of the ‘alter’ which he would make 
for himself, it is because he has been taught or ‘ration- 
alised’ for himself some ‘difference.’ The aristocrat’s 
child gives equality to the charwoman’s child until he 
is taught there is a ‘difference.’ Always and every- 
where, then, ‘difference’ is the occasion and excuse for 
ignoring the equal claims.” 

Enough has been said to impress upon any one the 
need for realising the importance of this early period. 
Nevertheless, there is more that must be said if 
we are to understand how we may win the child for 
Christ. It is at self-consciousness that the child meas- 
ures himself against others. He intuitively knows how 
far he can go. That does not mean that we are to 
“show him who is master”; but it does mean that the 
feeling must be conveyed to the child that you seek and 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 47 


know what is good for him. He must feel that when 
you withhold anything from him it is from no arbitrary 
reason, or caprice. A child will almost instantly accept 
your judgment when he grasps that there is reason be- 
hind it. 

More important for our immediate purpose in this 
volume is the growth in the child’s conception of, and 
desire for, God. This is undoubtedly linked up with 
the “love sentiment.” A child has no innate spiritual 
or moral ideas. But he has what Dr. Hadfield has 
aptly called “The Urge to completeness.” On every 
level of his being we can see this urge at work. On 
the physiological it is that “Vis medicatrix” on which 
we depend for recuperation and the urge to health; on 
the ethical level we see the urge manifested in the 
striving towards our ideal; on the psychological the 
organising activities of the mind make for unity; and 
now on the spiritual level we see the love sentiment 
seeking a perfect object. 

The strongest urge within the child is the love urge. 
The thwarting of this urge is the cause of more failures 
to gain a religious and healthy life than all other causes. 
The child cannot help seeking the warmth, comfort, 
approval, recognition and inspiration of affection. He 
seeks them in the parents first of all; then in school- 
fellows, chums and sweetheart in turn. His very atti- 
tude to the universe may be finally determined by the 


satisfaction or non-satisfaction of this urge. He meas- | | 


ures God by the amount of love he receives in the’ 
world. There can be little doubt, no matter what the- 
ologians and philosophers say, that our final attitudes 
to God, society and destiny are emotionally motivated. 


48 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


A harsh arbitrary father will make it very hard for the 
child to find any attraction in the idea of God as “Our 
Father.”’ 

We have now seen something of what psychologically 
happens with the growing self-consciousness of the 
child. How tremendously important this period is only 
those who have had to deal with abnormal adolescents 
and adults can realise; for in analysis they are nearly 
always brought back to this period for the causes of 
failure to become adjusted to the varying experiences of 
life. The “contrary” or “Bolshevik” adolescent and 
adult is generally the product of the arbitrary withhold- 
ing of simple pleasures in childhood. The thwarting of 
their nature by “authority” invariably tends to create a 
pathological antagonism to all authority. 

From what has been said of this all-important period, 
“the parents must already realise the powerful factor 
the home is in the formative years. The true begin- 
nings of adjustment to the three fundamental realities 
are made at this time; and they are made in the home. 
If by any means one of the parents has roused re- 
sentment in the child, it may be repressed into the un- 
conscious; nevertheless the growing boy finds himself 
with an increasing antagonism to everything which re- 
minds him of the parent. Kleptomania is not seldom 
due to unconscious resentment; lying may be induced 
by the effort to win the status which the attitude of 
parent or teacher has undermined; masturbation is 
often the direct outcome of corporal punishment. 

Space, however, will not allow me to treat of the 
delinquent child. My task is to try and show how the 
child can be won for the service and love of our Lord. 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 49 


All the inner tendencies of the child may be so directed, 
or sublimated, that every impulse may become a servant 
of the Christ sentiment. Christ may become his “‘ob- 
jective conscience,” the very spirit of Jesus may be 
made the effect of the child’s love sentiment; His king- 
dom direct his will; His teaching inform the sense 
of justice; His life, death and resurrection determine 
the child’s attitude to God, the soul and destiny. 

From the beginning the parents must consciously, 
intelligently and patiently help the child to become 
adjusted to society. The child is at first an individu- 
alist. His first problem is to become a corporate be- 
ing; to learn to love and seek the things that gain by 
being shared. He must learn to rejoice in the success 
and welfare of his little society. That is no easy task. 
The young child may envy the presents his brother or 
sister receives on birthdays; gently the intelligent 
parent, instead of scolding, will help him to rejoice 
with those that rejoice; to feel that what success comes 
to any member of the family all share, When that is 
accomplished the child is on the way to becoming a 
corporate individual, seeking not selfish ends but cor- 
porate ends. He will pass to the school and rejoice in 
every scholastic or athletic success any member or team 
brings to the school even though he has had no share in 
realising it. He will quickly learn to work for the suc- 
cess of his Form rather than from the morbid desire 
to be at the top; he will be a team man in group play, 
etc., etc. When he reaches manhood the Kingdom of 
God will then become a fundamental motivating power. 
in all his actions. Unselfishness will characterise his. 
behaviour to others. Society will cease to be a restrain- 


50 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


ing power; it will then constrain him. In his relation- 
ships with other human beings, and in co-operation 
with them for social ends, he will find life’s true values. 
Society will have become the “means of his moral life.”’ 
Society now constrains him; its good is identical with 
his good; he neither resents its legitimate restraints nor 
attempts to circumvent them; they are his guides. He 
is adjusted to society. 

But for this to happen definite training is needed. 
When the child becomes self-conscious its education in 
the home is by way of breathing in its atmosphere 
rather than obeying its precepts. In a word there is 
a “public opinion” in the home by which the growing 
child receives its standard of moral and spiritual values. 
The content of its conscience is being given. 

There is no subject on which even Christian parents 
need enlightenment more than that of conscience. The 
child is born with no innate standard of good and evil. 
Within the child there is an active tendency towards 
the conduct he has learned as “good.’’ When this 
tendency is overborne by the strong desire of some 
impulse the child feels the “pangs of conscience.” 
But the child is not given the standard of good. He 
accepts by suggestibility the standard implicit in the 
public opinion of the home. It is not what he is taught, 
but what he observes that is all important. It is what 
the home and school spontaneously condemn or ap- 
prove; the good rejoiced in; the evils deplored; the 
talk at the father’s table; the conversation out of school 
hours in the dormitory and playground; the attitude of 
parents to each other, and to life in general, that give 
the first and lasting content to conscience. The extreme 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 51 


suggestibility of the young mind, and the exaggerated 
prestige of the parents, teachers, and seniors in school, 
make it very hard for the growing child to resist the 
ideals of home and school. They become his standard 
of values; the measure of his own conduct; the reach 
of his conscience. The keen conscience is the outcome 
of an atmosphere wherein whatsoever things are lovely 
and of good report are conveyed spontaneously. 

All this applies equally well to the standard of jus- 
tice. By his innate sense of justice the child realises 
what is meant by playing fair; and there is a tendency 
to do it. But what is “fair,’’ what is just, he uncon- 
sciously learns from our actions, conversations and 
attitudes. 

I must not be understood to imply that there is no 
conflict between the child’s instinctive desires and what 
is conveyed to him as good or just. There is always 
a conflict. Instinctive actions offer immediate satis- 
factions, intense pleasure. Conscience, on the other 
hand, often has nothing but hard tasks, remote satis- 
factions and self-denial. 

It is because there is conflict that discipline is needed. 
The young tree needs turning to the sun. Love and 
strictness, discipline and freedom, are not antitheses. 
If these are not to be made to appear as though they 
were antagonistic then it must be clearly understood 
what a sentiment means. The sentiment involves the 
true and permanent good of the object—in this case 
the child. An intelligent conception of the permanent 
good of the child involves strictness and discipline. The 
chiid has to be taught that life makes moral claims 
upon him; he has to be guided into moral and spiritual 


52 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


freedom. But this means freedom from inward 
restraints—the domination of isolated impulses; free- 
dom to act along the line of the ideal. As Pfister puts 
it: “Genuine strictness is free from arbitrariness; it 
does not want to play the master for the pleasure of 
showing its power; it commands and forbids only that 
which, after mature consideration, it considers good and 
therefore possible of accomplishment; but having come 
to a decision it insists on fulfilment.” 

The very nature of the sentiment determines the 
kind of strictness and discipline needed. The perma- 
nent good of the child bars out the giving of anything, 
however much pleasure it may immediately bring, 
if it is to endanger the permanent good of the child. 
‘Many a mother has been tempted to save her child 
present suffering; but the good of the child as a whole 
corrects this natural tendency. ‘The essential thing is 
that the demands of discipline shall not be imposed 
merely from without, after the manner of a drill ser- 
geant, or by appealing to base and sensual motives. 
We must show their connexion with the innermost 
personality of human beings, and must translate them 
into the language of that personality. We must show 
that it is by discipline that the personality frees itself 
from the tyranny and caprices of selfishness, and gains 
control over the life of the senses.” It is in this way 
that the child gains will-control. Lack of self-control 
does not mean that the child is acting in virtue of some- 
thing outside the self; but that he is impelled by isolated 
impulses not yet swept into purposes of the organised 
or will-self. 

Probably the most important thing we have to keep 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 53 


in mind during these early formative years is the fact 
that he is unconsciously taking up his attitude to God 
and the world. It is, as has already been said, an emo- 
tional attitude in the first instance, however true it is 
that later a rational basis is sought for the attitude. 
From the parents’ attitude to religion, and equally their 
attitude to him, the child derives his attitude to God, 
the soul and the world. The father is the boy’s first 
hero; and very largely his God. If your conception of 
God demands a strictness and discipline that denies 
simple pleasures, arbitrary inhibitions, religion is going 
to be hard for your child. Is not God too often associ- 
ated with our restraints instead of being linked with 
every pleasure and legitimate joy of the child? It is 
at this period and not later that the growing heart and 
mind must be brought into living contact with the idea 
of God we have seen in Jesus Christ. The need to 
love and be beloved is active during these years; and its 
satisfaction ought to be linked with God as the giver 
of all love. In this way the Christ sentiment is ac- 
quired. 

The power to form sentiments which becomes active 
from the dawn of self-consciousness onwards, ought 
to be utilised to help the child to acquire a permanent 
interest in those objects, ideas and ideals which will 
organise his inner energies on behalf of good conduct. 
Education, as Professor James noted long ago, is just 
the organisation of the innate and acquired tendencies 
towards behaviour. An early love of God, Sunday 
School, Goodness, Purity, etc., will mean that the con- 
flicts—moral, spiritual and intellectual—of adolescence, 
will be fought out within these interests and not away 


54 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


from them as so often happens. A boy may get away 
from the organised forces of religion; nevertheless if 
an early sentiment is acquired it will manifest itself in 
some cognate service. Many a social worker, outside 
the Church, is unconsciously sustained by a religious 
“complex,’—an emotional interest in the Kingdom of 
God early aroused. Many an adolescent through this 
sentiment for Church and school has been kept in touch 
with both when doubt and passion were tearing him 
away. The “Will to Believe” is determined by emo- 
tional attitudes; and these, in turn, depend on the senti- 
ments we have helped the growing boy or girl to 
acquire. 


PUBERTY 


The second adjustment we mentioned was to Sex. 
How few fathers or mothers ever look back to the 
puberty and adolescent stage and recall the habits and 
the phantasies whose power was the hardest thing they 
had to overcome in the early days of Christian life. 

We cannot go into detail here on the vexed ques- 
tion as to how far sex does enter into formative 
forces of character. All we can do is to insist that 
wise parents and teachers will never be afraid to 
deal with these questions. They will lovingly watch 
for the first stirrings of the sex life and guide them 
through puberty and adolescence. They will patiently 
strive to enlighten the growing mind. Personally I 
agree with Freud’s recommendation that we should 
answer a child’s questions only to the limit of the child’s 
understanding. From the first sex questions of early 


mete 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 55 


childhood to the more serious of adolescence and 
puberty, the whole sex nature should be put on a very 
high level. Procreation is of God, and not of the devil. 
It is a prerogative bestowed by God. Therefore we 
must instil high ideals of purity within our sex nature 
and not in opposition to it; we must create a chivalrous 
love of woman, the sense of responsibility to the mate 
God is one day to send, and to the children that will 
be theirs. In this way sexual temptation will be robbed 
of half its power. We must be careful to teach the 
young that impurity is not a giving way to a lower 
nature but a crucifying of the higher nature. Love 
itself would be an impossibility but for this side of our © 
being; the tender emotion is linked with it, and is 
generated by it. | 

In helping boys and girls to control their impulses 
we must be very careful not to inspire repression. 
We must help them to sublimate; to take their creative 
energy and turn it into the creative channels of voca- 
tion, profession, social service, indeed of character. 
Above all, love objects are the surest safeguards. And 
if before puberty and adolescence are reached we have 
been helping our children to acquire true sentiments 
for God, Christ, Society, Woman, Children, we shall 
have provided the only real safeguards against sexual 
pre-occupation. : 

An even more delicate tact is needed in dealing with 
the shame which rises in a youth who has given way 
to any sexual temptation. Harshness is fatal; and 
only leads to neurotic and moral complications all too 
familiar to the medical psychologist. Corporal punish- 
ment as often as not drives the trouble deeper. Kind 


56 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


and sympathetic guidance alone can keep this kind of 
shame from wrecking the possibility of a moral and 
spiritual life. 


ADOLESCENCE 


In turning now to the final period with which I am 
asked to deal, I cannot but draw your attention to 
the quotation with which the chapter commenced. 
Adolescence is the harvest-time of all that has gone 
before. Nevertheless, there are well defined charac- 
teristics of this period that make it very important for 
the reaping of the harvest for Jesus Christ. It is the 
age of idealism; the age of decision; the age of hopes; 
of awaking love. The years before will have de- 
termined the kind of ideals that are likely to appeal; the 
objects on which decisions will be taken; the kind of 
hopes suffusing the mind; and what the awaking love 
is to promise. Just because this period has these char- 
acteristics the possibility of correction of early aberra- 
tions is at its maximum. ) 

Already we have seen that this is the time of moral 
conflict. Moral conflict is only possible where idealism 
is present. The growing mind is faced with a dualism 
within; the isolated impulses, desires, ambitions, with 
their promise of immediate satisfactions come into con- 
flict with the moral urge to perfection, and the strong 
urge of the conscience. By his very innate idealism the 
adolescent cannot camouflage his conscience with the 
impossibility of his high ideals. Evil 1s never so real 
again as at this period. The youth not only believes in 
ideals but he believes in idealism. He thinks in terms 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 57 


of what ought to be; he has no doubt as to whether 
the ideal can arise amid the actual. To him that is an 
immediate inference. | 

What makes this period so decisive is the fact that the 
idea of the Self becomes clearer to consciousness. The 
human being is a rational and moral being; but these 
abstract ideas do not play a very important part until 
now. Habits, desires, etc., have been formed in the 
preceding years; but at this period the growing mind 
realises vividly that these are “mine,” “Me.” There 
comes a more objective view of the self. It comes up 
for judgment. It is this that makes the moral and 
intellectual conflict so intense. Though the Self-senti- 
ment—together indeed with all the sentiments—has 
been functioning during earlier years, it is now that it 
‘may become the conscious integrating factor in char- 
acter and personality. This ideal Self which can now 
be objectively seen comes into conscious conflict with 
the actual Self; and the adolescent may try to break 
away from the tendencies and desires, etc., which he 
finds within himself. In any case the self-sentiment, 
and the idea of the Self which the adolescent has be- 
come aware, begin to organise experience around them- 
selves. He now begins to identify himself with his 
behaviour. He experiences ideas, desires, feelings and 
actions as “mine,’ and he must settle whether they 
are worthy of him. 

Again, his ideas of God, of Christ, of the Church; 
his attitudes, social and individual, are now brought 
spontaneously to the bar of rational judgment. They 
must receive rational sanction else there is no inner 
peace ; no conscious unity; there is a “divided self.” 


58 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


It is difficult to over-estimate this vivid awareness 
of the moral and rational Self as a formative factor 
in the moral and spiritual life of the adolescent. What 
the moral self ought to be will depend very largely on 
previous training; the power rationally to evaluate that 
self will be determined to some extent by the education 
received. Yet not wholly. In virtue of his individu- 
ality the adolescent will have his own point of view, and 
may demand a greater self than the prevailing moral 
standards; he may seek a more rational conception of 
the fundamental realities than his fathers. That is why 
in the adolescent period “authority” must give way to 
the innate demand for freedom. When we have tried 
to instil high moral content to conscience, and un- 
folded our conception of God in Christ, we must stand 
aside as it were, that the decision of the adolescent 
may be his own. There is no danger like a second- 
hand religion. We must so work that his religion will 
be his own—a speaking with God as God has spoken to 
him. 

It is in this period also that volition or will be- 
comes intensely self-conscious. Up to this time the youth 
has will in the sense that he makes decisions. But 
these are motived and determined largely by the vari- 
ous sentiments he has acquired. At adolescence, there 
ought to be a tendency towards some sentiment which 
will organise all the inner energies around itself. Each 
sentiment will then play its part in relation to this ruling 
sentiment. There can be no strong, stable character 
or personality without a dominating sentiment; and 
the kind of sentiment that ascends the throne of the 
self will determine the kind of personality achieved. 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 59 


it is these facts that have determined adolescence 
as the period of moral and spiritual decisions. Few, 
if any, would question Professor Starbuck’s conclusion: 
“Conversion is an adolescent phenomenon.” We can 
see why. For personality, for the satisfaction of the 
self-sentiment, the self must settle what kind of a 
self it means to become. Affective moral and rational 
needs now cry for gratification. The soul demands a 
universe friendly to its needs. And in so far as 
Christ is presented as the way, and the goal of those 
clamant needs, the adolescent will decide for Christ. 
How hard the decision will be depends almost entirely 
on the training up to this period. 

Decision, then, is. the most fundamental need of 
this time. Just as adolescence must decide on vocation, 
and concentrate on preparation if worldly success is to 
be gained; so it is the period when it must be brought 
- home that spiritual decision is even a greater need. The 
adolescent who wants to be nothing in particular seldom 
becomes a successful business man. Without decision 
the strong, unified, moral and spiritual personality is 
a psychological impossibility. 

It is not within the province of this chapter to dis- 
cuss the kind of ideas of God, Christ, Pleasure, etc., 
which ought to be kept in mind throughout all the 
formative years. Psychology cannot deal with the 
validity of ideas. Nevertheless psychology can test 
these ideas from its own standpoint. Moral person- 
ality from the psychological point of view is char- 
acterised by unity:—the inner elements of instincts, 
conscience, individuality, reasons, sentiments, are all 
co-operating in the interests of the personality as a 


60 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


whole. Every idea we try to instil into the young mind 
can be tested by its effect on the harmony or dis- 
harmony it produces. Any ideas which mean the 
repression of any part of our nature stand condemned. 
The good life is not the life free from passion; psy- 
chologically that would be a bad life; the good life is 
that wherein the passions are swept into some large 
purpose within which the various elements of the per- 
sonality are being satisfied; it is positive and never 
negative. 

This to a large extent gives parent and teacher their 
task. In the first years the child is guided almost wholly 
by pleasure and pain. Anything that gives satisfaction 
to the innate tendencies will be desired, and anything 
that thwarts them will raise resentment, as well as make 
the child avoid it. We must try to choose wisely for 
the child the pleasures he will enjoy and the pains 
he will seek to avoid. But our choice must be made 
by trying to conceive what is best for the personality 
asa whole. From the first we must be helping the child 
and the early and late adolescent ,to sublimate his im- 
pulses. We must continually be seeking to give the 
growing mind a many-sided interest in life, morality 
and religion, rather than a many-sided knowledge. It 
is interest that matters, and if a deep interest has been 
created in the home years, the adolescent period may 
be passed safely, or if not, then that interest will in 
the long run bring him back “home.” All the early 
training should keep in mind the final self-conscious 
decision we desire our children to make for Christ. 
We must so present Him that the growing Youth will 
see in Him the ideal he desires to realise; and we must 


THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF LIFE 61 


show that in His service the whole nature is satisfied. 

At that:period the work of teacher usually stops. 
But sanctification is just as necessary as decision or 
conversion. It is often in the desire for sanctification 
that the growing Christian comes against the difficul- 
ties. Very often the cause of the difficulty lies far back. 
It is now that the minister’s training ought to come in 
with power. The minister should be an expert in guid- 
ing the young Christian to sanctification. He ought 
to understand the difficulties that confront the Chris- 
tian as well as the doctor knows the difficulties of bodily 
health, or the psychotherapist the disturbing factors of 
nervous trouble. It is no use covering up our ignorance 
by ascribing all backsliding to sin. That gives no more 
guidance than the doctor would give if he ascribed 
everything to disease! Certainly it is all disease in the 
domain of imperfect health. But why one disease 
‘rather than another? Was there a predisposition? So, 
the wise minister will proceed with the growing 
Christians who find saritification hard. Each one will 
find it hard at different points. This is not chance. 
We must then look back through the early training and 
find its defects either in indulgence or strictness, and 
correct them. We must not be satisfied merely to win 
the adolescent for Christ and then leave him as though 
he would have no temptations. He may have had few 
till then! We must win them wholly for Christ. That 
must be the aim underlying the whole of the formative 
years. 


CHAPTER III 
JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 
THOMAS PATERSON, M.A. 


“You English,” said King Khama, “take great care of 
your goods, but you throw away your children.” ‘There 
is still a sting of truth in the reproach, but we are grow- 
ing wiser. Everywhere the eyes of thoughtful men 
are being fixed upon the child. Education has become 
almost an obsession. The hinge of destiny, we recog- 
nise, turns upon youth. “All our problems centre in 
the child. In the treatment of the child the world 
foreshadows its own future and its faith. All words 


and all thinking lead to the child—to that vast immor-_ 


tality and wide sweep of infinite possibility which the 
child represents.”—(Du Bois). The welfare of the 
nation, the Church, the whole human race—the very 
possibility of the Kingdom of God—lies in the heart 
of the child. The situation is one we must face. There 
is no escape. It confronts each new generation afresh. 
For the Christian mind the norm and mood with which 
it has to grapple this tremendous problem is the spirit 
and example of Jesus Christ. The very emphasis which 
has come to be set upon the value of the child is due 
directly to the influence of Christ and the spread of 
Christian enlightenment amongst men. Christ has 
rescued the ideal of childhood and sanctified forever 
all that pertains toit. Our inspiration and our guidance 


are to be found in Him. From our comprehension of 
62 


Gas, 
~~ 


JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 63 


the spirit of Christianity, we might, without much risk 
of error, have inferred what our attitude to the young 
life growing up in our homes should be. Fortunately, 
we have facts more definite to guide us. Among the 
sweetest glimpses of the real life of long ago which 
lies behind the New Testament record is that of Jesus 
and the children. Throughout these pages which deal 
with the most momentous issues that affect the human 
soul—questions as high as heaven and deep as hell—we 
rejoice to hear the pattering of children’s feet, and see, 
ever and again, the gleam of bright young faces, eager 
in the Master’s presence; we hear His voice—‘‘Suffer ° 
the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them 
not.” It is like finding violets on a mountain-side. Our 
faith is humanised, and we are brought into kindlier 
touch with the days of old. No systems of theology 
or doctrine can contain the atmosphere and fragrance 
which meet our spirit there. Omit the incidents of the 
intercourse of Jesus with the children, as our Church 
creeds do, and no great principle of Christian faith is 
touched, nothing of vital moment seems to have been 
removed. But think again, and one is conscious that 
something fine and sweet and beautiful has gone. Un- 
speakable would be the loss. We realise that this 
portion of the sacred history has now become to us 
priceless. The tenderest and truest of our thoughts of 
Jesus comes when we have the vision of Him amongst 
the children. There is not a single word of His in 
this regard that we could lightly give up. Every heart 
that has ever throbbed with the love of a little child is 
drawn closer to the Master’s side because He loved 
children too. There we must stand to learn to see them 


64 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


with His eyes, and catch something of the very thought 
of God. Indeed, we almost rejoice that once the 
disciples made the rash mistake of supposing that “the 
little children” were of no interest to Jesus, because, 
by that very gesture, they caused the winsome tender- 
ness and the gracious spirit of His loving heart to shine 
so swiftly and so clearly forth. Since that day, what 
Jesus thought about the children is a question which 
need be asked no more. 

The essence of true greatness is said to lie in the 
abiding of the child-heart, and we see this in its per- 
fection in Jesus Christ Himself. Only in passing shall 
we speak of the Childhood of Jesus. But it is good to 
call to mind that He too was once a child, and thereby 
threw a new lustre upon childhood. Surely behind the 
brief announcement: “He increased in wisdom and 
stature, and in favour with God and man,” we can see 
a sweet, lovable, and loving child in Joseph’s home in 
Nazareth. There He knew and played with other chil- 
dren. It was part of His initiation into the knowledge 
of the life of man, and His appointed lot. Nor could 
the memory of these days altogether depart from Him. 
It is difficult to say how much children are impressed 
by the fact that once Jesus was a child like them, but 
it creates a sympathetic interest and a link of fellow- 
ship. 

As for the inner mind of Jesus, we know how early 
it became a vital, filial consciousness, and so remained 
through all His earthly days. His whole life was 
simply a movement in the way of obedience to the will 
of His Heavenly Father, the accomplishing of His 
“Father’s business.” He was God’s perfect Son. 


JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 68. 


CHRIST’S ATTITUDE TO THE CHILDREN 


The interest of Christ’s attitude is here, that it was 
the attitude of the perfect man, the Divine Son of 
God, with clear vision of God’s purpose in man, and 
towards man, and perfect knowledge of the qualities 
and needs of human nature. By birth He was of Jew- 
ish race, and amongst the Jews especially, children have 
ever been an interest and a joy. That is the pride and 
boast of Judaism still. Children are appreciated, loved, 
and nurtured with the utmost care for their place and. 
part in life. The mere instinct of racial preservation 
does not account for this. It has its roots in their 
religious genius, and runs back to their faith in God. 
“The Jews never neglect any child. This one factor 
is the key of their supremacy.” So writes one of our 
modern social psychologists, and it is true. The duty 
was imbedded deep amongst the injunctions of their 
religion, and upon every devout Jewish father was 
laid the strict charge of the careful religious instruc- 
tion of his family. The very ritual of his worship 
appealed to childish minds and stimulated the ques- 
tion: ‘““What mean ye by this service?” A more per- 
fect opportunity for the beginning of an education 
which was at once both religious and national cannot 
be conceived. It was an opportunity which was not 
neglected. ‘In no denomination,” says Rabbi Green, 
“does the religious training of children take a higher 
place than among the Jews” and they have reaped their 
reward. When Josephus argued against Apion he said), 
“Our principal care of all is to educate our children.” 
And in the Talmud, that ancient book of gathered wis- 


66 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


dom, it is written, “By the breath of the children the 
world is preserved.” ‘This was the attitude towards the 
children with which Jesus came naturally into contact. 
It was the mind and habit of every devout and thought- 
ful Jew. It was a high purpose and a sacred tradition 
which Jesus accepted, and enhanced and enriched. He 
was more than a pious and thoughtful Israelite. He 
was the Son of God, and He looked out upon the chil- 
dren with “royal eyes.’”’ When we see Him then in 
their company it is as a King disguised. He is com- 
pletely aware of His Messianic vocation, filled with the 
infinite love of God in His purpose of Redemption, 
aware of the endless glory and possibility of human life 
as no wisest Rabbi ever was. He knew the destiny of 
the human soul as God knew it. Ina child, Jesus was 
confronted with the whole potentiality of the life of 
man for good or evil. There it lay, wrapt up, as yet un- 
spent and unspoiled, appealing to His wisdom and to 
His love. How will He reach that young soul? How, 
respecting its freedom and its immaturity, will He seek 
to win it and keep it for God? When Jesus is face to 
face with a little child, it is a situation of teeming in- 
terest. It is the Love of God, incarnate, in touch with 
the highest creative work of God, a child, in whom is 
still a soul of liberty. For we never see the real signifi- 
cance of a child unless we set it against the background 
of God. If Tennyson’s thought was lifted up to heaven 
by his contemplation of the “flower in the crannied 
wall,” acknowledging that there could be no final in- 
terpretation of it being unless in the light of the Divine, 
how much more is all that true when we look upon the 
living mystery of a little child. it is something so 


JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 67 


wonderful, so astounding, so amazing that, as somebody 
has said, were it not that children really were we could 
not believe that they were possible. A child is the latest 
revelation of God’s creative handiwork, the last impress 
of his wondrous image. “A small immortal, one short 
step within Time’s portal.’”’ Romance ever clings to 
the skirts of childhood. 


“And there I see—these sparkling eyes 

These stores of mystic meaning. These young lives 

Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships 

Soon to sail out over the measureless seas 

On the soul’s voyage. 

Only a lot of boys and girls? 

Ah! More, infinitely more!” : 
WHITMAN, 


When we seek to reckon all the elements of wondrous 
being which are implicit in a child’s existence, and ask 
what lies behind—‘‘How did they all come to be?’ —we 
cannot find a better answer than the poet gave— 


“God thought about me and so I grew. 
How did you come to us, you dear? 
God thought about you, and so I am here.” 


The pure eye of Jesus looked upon the children and 
saw the radiance of their creation as a crown upon their 
heads. He saw them in the thought, and purpose, and 
love of God, very near to God and very precious in His 
sight. “Take heed that ye despise not one of these 
little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their 
angels do always behold the face of My Father which 
is in heaven.” Whatever other revelation lies behind 
these words, they are surely a proclamation of the love 


68 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


of God for all little children, whose lives to Him are 
dear. It was in this spirit, the spirit of gracious love, 


in which Jesus approached the children, and indeed it 


is the only pathway along which we can get near a 


- 
at 


child’s real heart. They were God’s children, made for | 


fellowship and service. He had breathed into them the 
breath of life. Not yet were they aware of the splen- 
dour of their destiny, nor of the assailment and tempta- 
tion of the world which they must meet. Jesus knew. 
All He could do was to love them, bless them, and fill 
their hearts with the love of God. For this was their 
best defence. The pathos of life for Him was that all 
men had once begun as “little children,” near to God, 
close to His love, but had wandered far away on the 
road of sin. They must come back. “Ye must be born 
again.” Life must be made over afresh. The child- 
heart must be the starting-point anew. They must learn 
to rest in God’s love, and trust in His guidance. When, 
young or old, we attain this child-like spirit, we hear 
His voice in, “Suffer the little children to come unto 
Me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom 
of Heaven.” 

As we think again of Jesus and the children we are 
left with the impression of an attitude more than any- 
thing else—an attitude of infinite tenderness, reverence 
and love—the very spirit of the grace of God. It is 
this attitude we must seek to learn, for in it lies the 
secret of all wise sympathy, of all true teaching, and 
that regard for the interest of the child which is a re- 
flection of the mind of Christ. “Whenever a day comes 
when I can receive a boy into my school without emo- 
tion it will be time for me to be off.” So said Dr. 


JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 69 


Arnold of Rugby. Dr. Grenfell, talking of teachers, 
puts the same thought thus, “Shew me a teacher who 
does not love his boys and you shew me one who is 
of no use.” They had both learned in the school of 
Jesus, and they had learned well. 

We have no instance of any formal instruction of 
the children on the part of Jesus. Most of them, 
probably, were too young for this. Had the record 
of even one talk remained it would have been a price- 
less gem. But there is none. We can but imagine that 
He who understood them so perfectly and loved them 
so deeply, would speak of birds and flowers and the 
great deeds of their race—such things as young hearts 
love—and lift their thoughts from these still higher, to 
the reality of the great, good Father in Heaven, stirring 
and answering at once the “queer unanchored thoughts 
of childhood,” gently awakening the young soul to life, 
watching it open to the sunshine of the face of God. 
He could not talk to them of “the decease which He 
should accomplish at Jerusalem.” The agony and 
passion of the Cross were waters far too dark and deep 
for young hearts to fathom. One day they might come 
to know that all that was but a deeper plunge of the love 
of God. The knowledge and understanding of these 
things lay in the days ahead. We can tell it to our 
children now and let it make its own appeal. What does 
remain clear and unmistakable is the loving and rever- 
ential regard of Jesus for the children. They were 
precious in His sight. They were God’s. And this 
must be the Christian attitude always. It is not sur- 
prising that one of the hardest words Jesus ever uttered 
was against those who should dare to hurt a child, 


70 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


“Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which be- 
lieve in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in 
the depth of the sea.” 

Jesus has thrown this defence around childhood, and 
innocence, and trusted love, and who makes base as- 
saults on these does so at his eternal peril. Once in His 
life Jesus called Himself the Good Shepherd, and no 
good shepherd but has a special care towards the lambs. 
‘Surely we are justified in seeing in His last charge to 
Peter, “Feed My lambs,” a token of Christ’s care for 
the children, His safeguarding for them a place in the 
life and love of His people and His Church. The atti- 
tude of Jesus adds its own glory to even the purest 
natural affection for the children. It lifts love to its 
highest level. It tinges it with the glory of God. The 
service of childhood is the service of Christ Himself. 

It is in this attitude that we must look for the chief 
teaching of Jesus about the children. But there is one 
illuminating word which it is worth while to consider. 
““Whoso,” He said, “‘shall receive one such little child 
in My name receiveth Me.” It suggests that God comes 
very close to the heart that prepares for and receives the 
coming of a little child as the gift of God’s grace. 
Christ, in the closest imaginable way, identifies Himself 
with the children, so that service and love for them are 
in truth service and love for Himself. ‘True parent- 
hood has thus a sacramental grace. If we had to deal 
with the child Jesus, how prayerful, and loving, and 
tender, we should be in contact with His young life. 
This is how Jesus would have us approach all children. 
It is the warrant for the teacher’s most consecrated 


JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 71 


devotion, and the guarantee of the glory and the bless- 
ing of his service. It is a work uniquely acceptable in 
the Master’s sight. ! 

As regards the response of the children to Jesus, for 
the most part, only conjecture is possible for us. They 
appear always on terms of easy friendship. The appeal 
and fascination of His love could not but win them, 
for love, as has been said, is the language a child best 
understands. But on one occasion we hear the sound 
of their young and adoring voices, and we gather that 
by it Christ was strangely moved—“Hosanna to the 
Son of David.” They could hardly have penetrated to 
the great secret of His personality, but it is quite evident 
that they acclaimed Him with gladness, as one whom 
they knew, one whom they loved, and quite easily rose 
to the thought of Him as some great person destined for 
highest honour. They were unconscious prophets, and 
nearer the truth than they were aware. Jesus recog- 
nised this. The truly child-like heart has a rare gift 
of penetration, and here it had vision while the world 
was blind. For them at least there was no incongruity 
that their friend, Jesus, should be acclaimed the heaven- 
sent Messiah. “What a child cannot understand of 
Christianity, no one need try to.” In these words 
Ruskin has expressed a deep truth. In their voices 
was the acclaim of coming generations, and as Jesus 
heard them, something of the voice of God. By the 
leaping intuition of a pure, loving heart they had dis- 
covered the soul of truth, and accepted Jesus as their 
Lord. 

Childlike love and trust in Jesus lead the soul “far 
ben” into the highest mysteries of God. The logic of 


72 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


catechisms has little influence on a child’s mind, but 
the power of love and personality is certain, Doctrinal 
definitions have their use, but later. Sufficient to begin 
with, it is for a child to know Jesus, so that its confi- 
dence and love for Him are won. On that foundation 
the noblest life can be erected. I once asked a little 
child whose heart was held by the appeal of Jesus, 
why was it that she loved Him so. Her reply was, 
“T cannot tell.” Pressed to think again, she answered, 
“Tt must be because I know He loves me more than 
anybody else does.””’ When we so present Jesus that 
a child’s heart is enlightened, and responds like this, 
we have done well. For after all, the greatest fact of 
revelation of which the Cross itself is but the signal 
and compelling evidence, is that “God is love,” and 
when a child has once learned that it has the marrow 
of all theologies, and a grasp of things eternal. What 
satisfies a child’s pure heart satisfies the heart of man. 
It is to feel that we belong to God. “Infancy is the 
perpetual Messiah which comes into the arms of fallen 
men and pleads with them to return to Paradise.”— 
(Emerson). In this response to Jesus, as in so many — 
other things, “a little child shall lead them.” 

Sir George Adam Smith, in Palestine, once saw 
a shepherd carrying a lamb. He asked if it had a © 
broken leg, or was it tired, or why should the shepherd 
so care for it. The shepherd said it was nothing of 
that kind at all. He pointed to an old sheep that was 
gravely trotting by his side and said—“That is the 
mother, and she has a strange habit of wandering. 
The only way I can keep her with the flock is by taking 
her lamb—and carrying it.” 


CHAPTER IV 
THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 
J. WILLIAMS BUTCHER 
I: HISTORICAL 


In theory, the Christian Church has always recognised 
the importance of Child life, and has made provision 
for its due training in things “that pertain to life and 
godliness.’ Practice, however, has not always walked 
side by side with theory. The methods employed have 
been mechanical and conventional rather than inspiring 
_and effective. The energies of the Church have been 
directed towards the adult, and it has been assumed 
that the child must reach the “years of discretion” be- 
fore the Church need greatly concern itself about its 
welfare. To this indictment there are many and not- 
able exceptions; it simply states a general, though by 
no means a universal, condition. 

In the “Book of the Law’’—our Deuteronomy—very 
careful provision is made for the religious training 
of childhood, and the Christian Church received this 
heritage. St. Paul’s words, “Bring them up in the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord,” are an echo of 
Hebrew custom, and it is evident from certain of his 
greetings that the children of the members of the 
Church were, in the apostolic age, regarded as of the 


Church. Catechetical classes were a recognised and 
73 


74 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


important part of the organisation of the early Church, 
and whilst these prepared converts for Baptism and 
gave instruction in the doctrines of the Faith, they 
provided for the care of children as well as for the 
guidance of adults. With the growth of the power of 
the priesthood from the fourth century onward, the 
Church seems to have contented itself largely with the 
administration of Baptism and early Confirmation. At 
the same time it must not be forgotten that such pro- 
vision for education as obtained was mainly in the 
hands of the priesthood, or in the excellent schools 
associated with the monasteries that were dotted all 
over Europe. 

With the Reformation there came a change. The 
Reformed Churches realised the necessity for more 
careful instruction of the child in matters of the Faith. 
This reacted upon the Roman communion as witnessed 
by the edicts of the Council of Trent (1545-63) to the 
effect that “the bishops shall take care that at least on 
the Lord’s Day and other festivals the children of the 
parish be carefully taught the rudiments of the faith 
and obedience to God and their parents.” The Angli- 
can Church made genuine efforts to secure the religious 
training of the young, and in 1559 an instruction was 
issued forbidding children to attend Holy Communion 
before they had reached their twelfth birthday, and re- 
quiring that they should “be well instructed before- 
hand.” 

Then came the days of the Catechisms, and, apart 
from the powerful influence of the home, religious 
instruction was mainly catechetical. This is not the 
place to discuss at length the value of this method. Its 


THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 75 


appeal was to the head rather than to the heart; it 
cultivated memory rather than intelligence. At the 
same time it must be confessed that a sturdy type of 
Christian manhood flourished under the influence of the 
“Westminster,” the “Shorter” and similar catechisms, 
that for so many years held the field as the one way in 
which the Church sought to discharge its task of re- 
ligious education. 

With the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth cen- 
tury there came a marked change over the conception 
of the relation of the Church to the Child, and of the 
Child to the Church. Before he came into contact with 
Moravian influence, while he was still the orthodox 
Anglican parson of his age, John Wesley had a strong 
sense of the duty of the Church to care for the spiritual 
interest of the child. It is on record that in his mis- 
sionary days in Georgia he admitted four boys to Holy 
Communion after “having been instructed daily for 
several weeks.” His approval of the work of Hannah 
Ball of High Wycombe is typical of his desire that the 
children should be taught and trained as those for 
whom the Church was responsible. 

Robert Raikes followed Miss Ball in founding the 
Sunday School movement, and though at first this work 
was outside the control of the Churches, yet it soon 
came to be recognised as a powerful auxiliary, and to- 
day it is owned as an integral part of all Church work. 
To link School and Church more closely one to the 
other there sprang up various organisations, such as the 
Christian Endeavour, Guilds of various types and, in 
the Wesleyan community, the Junior Society Class. It 
would be difficult to estimate the results secured by 


76 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


these methods; they have been, and they are, very great. 
There is, however, a growing conviction that their re- 
lation to the Church is not sufficiently intimate: they 
are too often regarded as “auxiliaries,” and the tend- 
ency is to leave to these institutions that responsibility 
for the Child that should be the immediate duty of the 
Church. In other words, the day has come when the 
Church, gua Church, must concern itself as fully for 
the Child as for the Adult. 


II: DOCTRINAL 


The doctrines held by the various sections of the 
Church of necessity affect their practice. There is 
no trace of any theory of infant damnation in the 
teaching of the sub-apostolic days, but as the doctrines 
of “Original Sin” and “Total Depravity” hardened 
it was inevitable that the question of the relation of 
children to the Fall, and to its consequent punishment 
should arise. Salvation was ministered through the 
Church because the Church was “the Body of Christ,” 
the company of those who, through faith in Him, were 
redeemed from the consequences of the Fall. Outside 
the Church there was no salvation. Hence children 
must be received into the Church by Baptism: there 
was no salvation for the unbaptised. This was the 
teaching of Augustine, and it is the foundation of the 
dogma of Baptismal Regeneration, a dogma insisted 
on by the Roman and by certain of the Episcopal 
‘Churches of to-day. Inherited sin is washed away in 
Baptism, and inherited guilt, carrying liability to punish- 
ment, is cancelled. The implications of this teaching 


THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 17 


are such that the more recent thought of the Reformed 
Churches has rejected it. So stringent is the necessity 
of Baptism that in the Churches that most strongly 
emphasise this necessity “the sacrament may, under cer- 
tain circumstances, be administered by any one.” In 
justice to those who thus teach, it should be recognised 
that the Church sustains towards the baptised child 
a special responsibility to instruct and train the child 
in all that concern its spiritual life. 

A strongly defined doctrine of “Depravity” is held 
by many who reject the dogma of Baptismal Regenera- 
tion. It is taught that all children are “conceived and 
born in sin.” Article IX of the Church of England 
voices the teaching of certain of the Free Churches 
even of our own days. “Man is very far gone from 
original righteousness, and is of his own nature in- 
clined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary 
to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into 
this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.”’ 
This teaching is supported by “proof texts” that are 
often passages of Scripture torn from their natural 
context and made to carry a burden that is not justi- 
fied. 

The godly men who held this “stern” theology do 
not seem to have given full place to the redemptive 
work of our blessed Lord, If humanity was “summed 
up’ in its one representative—Adam—so that “in 
Adam all die’; it has also been included in its second 
and greater Representative—Jesus Christ—and “in 
Him shall all be made alive.” The “Fall” is countered 
by the “Cross.” It is surely Scriptural to believe 
that “Original guilt and liability to punishment on 


78 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


account thereof” is fully cancelled by the One who 
“offered Himself a sacrifice for sin.” The realisation 
of this fact has given to the Church a more hopeful 
message and a fuller understanding of the “love of God 
in Christ Jesus.” 

Largely owing to the teaching of Horace Bushnell, 
emphasised in our own days by the luminous thought 
of Prof. G. A. Coe, a new conception of Child Re- 
ligion has found favour. The oft quoted words of 
Bushnell refer to the influence of the Christian home, 
and to the “atmosphere” that affects not only the child 
from the day of its birth, but has also a definite part in 
determining the character of the child soon to be born; 
pre-natal influences count for much. “In the Christian 
family the Child should grow up a Christian and never 
know himself as being otherwise.” From the stand- 
point of the influence of the Church upon young life, 
Dale of Birmingham voices a similar thought when 
he says, ‘““The Christian Church should be an institution 
to render adult conversion needless.” The phrase, 
“Conversion by Education,” though it be as “heresy” 
to some, is happily recognised by many as the true 
interpretation of St. Paul’s words, “bring them up in 
the nurture and discipline of the Lord.” We are turn- 
ing with a sense of revolt from the attitude of a mother 
who, when the superintendent of a Sunday School com- 
plained of the conduct of her fifteen year old son, said, 
“Yes, but you see it was necessary that he should go 
wrong before he could be converted; now I hope he will 
soon be saved.” The home and the Church alike stand 
condemned when our children play the part of the 
prodigal and wander into the far country. It is weary 


THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 79 


work, that sad return. The definite, patient, intelligent 
care of parents and teachers should rob the “far coun- 
try” of all its attraction, and make the “home” so full 
of delight and of adventurous service that it fills the 
programme both for to-day and for to-morrow. One 
who looms large in the life of our nation to-day once 
said, “The greatest peril that confronts Britain is the 
displacement of the home and the dethronement of the 
parent.” Is it a fact that whilst the attitude of the 
Church toward child life has changed for the better, 
the sense of parental responsibility has weakened? If 
that be so, then one task that awaits the Church is the 
rousing of all parents that come under its influence to 
this, the first and foremost of their duties :—The re- 
ligious training of their children. 


III: CONSTRUCTIVE 


Yesterday has its message; to-day has its interests, 
but the call of to-morrow is the most important. So 
great is the task before the Church if the Nation is 
to be in fact, as it is in name, a Christian land—if the 
present indifference of the masses toward things spir- 
itual is to be changed into a fuller understanding of 
their nature and destiny—that we, remembering that 
“the children of to-day are the citizens of to-morrow,” 
need to think out with great care our plan of cam- 
paign. 

(a) The Development of the Sunday School. There 
is a danger lest the advocacy of a new plan should be 
supposed to imply adverse criticism of the work done 
by our forefathers. Let it be a sufficient answer to 


80 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


say that they lived and wrought in life’s yesterday: 
we are thinking of to-morrow. Child Psychology has 
so modified educational method that the workers in 
Sunday School dare not be content with a policy of 
what has been, shall be. Much of our work has been 
void of a well-thought-out, definite purpose: it has 
been pleasantly casual. This is not the place to attempt 
a history of the movement; if it were, much could be 
explained and justified. It was a long time before the 
Church consented to mother the School. When it did, 
it placed the “nursery” in dreary premises and employed 
the untrained as nurses. The planning of the work 
has lacked true educational purpose and method. The 
heresy that any one will do for a Sunday School teacher 
has greatly impaired the spiritual results that should 
be the one great aim of the work, and has in some 
quarters produced an unspiritual atmosphere. 
Happily the last few years have witnessed a change. 
The connection of Church and School is much more 
intimate than it was. The growth of the “Graded” 
system has attracted a better type of worker, whilst the 
preparation classes, that are an essential part of the 
system, have fostered a real sense of responsibility. 
Still much remains to be done. Premises need adapta- 
tion that the Graded School may be properly housed and 
equipped. The resources of the School must be hus- 
banded so that suitable appliances can be provided. 
‘Money, that is now spent in treats and prizes and other 
well-meant but unwise inducements, must be used more 
wisely, and in every way the School must be made at- 
tractive for the scholars. For the children the Sunday 


THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 81 


School is ‘‘God’s House;” it should be ‘‘God’s House 
beautiful.’”” Whilst personal consecration will ever 
remain the one essential qualification for the work, we 
must seek to enlist those who have received a liberal 
education, and urge upon them the Master’s words: 
“To whomsoever much is given, of him shall much 
be required.” 

(b) The presence and participation of children in 
the worship of the Church call for thought. It is 
generally accepted that the habit of attending the Pub- | 
lic Services should be formed during the “habit forming 
years” (that is to say, before the thirteenth birthday) 
or it will be difficult to draw the young adolescent to 
take part therein. It is also coming to be acknowledged 
that if the child be present, he should be made to feel 
that he is both wanted and welcomed, and that some 
part of the service should be so ordered as to make its 
special appeal to him. Where the service is not strictly 
liturgical this can easily be done. A children’s hymn, 
prayer and address can be introduced without lowering 
the tone of the worship. Our young worshippers do 
not want silly tales or improbable yarns: they will 
listen to teaching if it be adapted to their understanding. 
Now and again an adult may object; it might be a 
timely revelation if he could hear the objections of some 
children who have to “‘sit still and be good” throughout 
a service entirely ordered for adults. 

(c) Where a church can rejoice in a large congre- 
gation and many willing helpers, it 1s wise to organise 
an evening service entirely for young people. In the 
morning their place is with their elders, that they may 


82 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


sense the unity of the family of God. A somewhat 
different state of things will obtain later in the day. 
Earlier hours and brevity are then considerations. 

(d) A readjustment of the time of the Minister ts 
a clamant necessity. Many congregations demand the 
impossible. They ask that their pastor shall be a 
“Children’s man,” and yet fill his life with so many 
details that really belong to the laity, that what he 
would do, that he cannot. Also there are ministers 
whose conception of their ministry is that it is for the 
benefit of the adults, and who regard work among 
children as somewhat of a waste of energy. Let such 
help those who rejoice to minister to the young. Let 
them teach the teachers and thus enable others to do on 
« higher plane of efficiency what they prefer to do by 
deputy rather than attempt themselves. 

(e) When the days of childhood are merging into 
those of youth, special instruction in all that member- 
ship of the Church wmplies is not merely desirable, tt 
is an absolute necessity. ‘The early ’teen years witness 
the birth of the emotions, and are the days in which 
youth is specially open to the spiritual appeal. The 
tables printed in the volumes of Starbuck, Hall and 
Coe prove this, and their conclusions have been veri- 
fied by British investigators. It is folly for a Church 
court to say, “There is no time for these instructional 
classes.” Time must be found, and if other regular 
meetings prevent, then careful enquiry must be held as 
to the relative value of these meetings. It is hopeless to 
let things slide. Prepare carefully for a definite act of 
Decision: arrange for the first Communion: “Tend my 
lambs.” 


THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD 83 


(f) The Church must give such a vision of the 
Christian life that shall claim all the powers of youth, 
and inspire with a true sense of adventurous service. 
The mere routine of Church activity fails to prove in- 
tensely attractive to the sturdy boy of fifteen or sixteen 
years, as it also fails to win the modern maiden of a 
like age. Dr. Ritchie has made this very plain in his 
“The Teen Years.” Those who can see and teach the 
“Service of Christ’ in the “Service of the Other Man” 
will not fail in their work among youth. The Church 
can organise activities outside its special order of 
services, etc., and thus show “that the programme of 
Christianity is that of wholeness of life from which no 
human good is excluded.” Do not let Religious work 
be confined to, or confused with, Church work. 

(g) There are certain forms of work that are classed 
under the head of “Auxiliary Agencies.’ Every 
Church should recognise the value of these in the 
training of character. Many deplore the influence of 
the “Gang,” the appeal of the “Team.” It is futile. 
Utilise rather than deplore. 

There are men and women who will never fit into 
certain parts of the Church organisation, but they have 
a rare and beautiful gift of God: they can win and lead 
youth. The community that possesses such is false 
to its opportunities if it fails to give them full scope for 
such service as they can render. We must get rid of 
prejudices. Brigades, Scouts, Guides, Clubs of various 
kinds play a great part in restraining from evil and 
guiding into the good. It has been well said that 
Youth is “Body-Mind-and-Spirit” and not “Body, 
Mind, Spirit.” No boy is constructed on the ‘Water- 


84 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


tight compartment” principle. Touch him at one point 
and you touch him at all. Keep his body active, his 
mind interested in all that is wholesome, and you go a 
long way to awaken his dormant spiritual facilities. 

(h) Should the Church periodically organise Special 
Missions for the Young? Very rarely, and then with 
strict limitations and under the guidance of a type of 
man that is only occasionally to be found. As a rule, 
‘Mass appeals do more harm than good to those whose 
emotions are so easily excited and whose tendencies are 
gregarious. Emotion spends itself rapidly and once 
spent itis hard to reawaken. It is wiser to fish with the 
line than with the net, which being interpreted means 
that the direct, affectionate, personal appeal, if more, 
difficult, is more hopeful as to permanent results than 
the appeal en masse. 

“The future belongs to the children.” Let the 
Church prepare them for their great inheritance. 


CHAPTER V 


THE NORMAL RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 
OF CHILDHOOD 


THISELTON MARK, D.Lirr., M.Eb., B.Sc. 


THE normal is rooted in the natural. When we know 
the normal, we know the natural; when we know the 
natural, we know the normal. At present, of course, 
we know neither; that is to say, with any approach to 
completeness. Yet we know one or two heartening 
things as the result of child-study or developmental psy- 
chology. We know—even from the physiological com- _ 
parison of the relative sizes of the head and the rest 
of the body in babyhood with their relative sizes in the 
adult—that the boy is born, so to say, brain-foremost. 
Nature seems bent on guaranteeing him as a thinker. 
Similarly, with regard to his moral nature. Morality is 
not a super-normal product, an “extra.’”’ It belongs to 
life as men live it; the more complete their living, the 
higher their morality; and vice versa. ‘Moral action is 
healthy action; or in terms of evolution, “natural 
selection selects morality.” Morality, in a word, be- 
longs to man. It stands for the part he has to 
play. 

Is there any analogy between these things, the child’s 
normal mental development and his normal moral de- 
velopment, and what we must regard as that highest 


thing—actually inclusive of the other two and of much 
85 


86 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


besides—his normal religious development? Is that, 
too, rooted in nature? It was not thought to be so in 
the days when it was believed (as certain trust-deeds— 
discreetly, if somewhat compromisingly, hidden from 
view—still aver) that human nature was universally 
and totally depraved. Can it be thought to be so in 
view of the need of which we are all more or less con- 
scious for conversion, or a new spiritual birth “from 
above?” Itis the purpose of this short paper to suggest 
that it can, and that what we call faith is a normal 
functioning of powers that are natural to us. There is 
such a thing as “natural religion,’ which is often 
spoken of independently of Christianity; and there is 
no advantage either in theory or in practice in failing 
to see that the religion of Jesus Christ takes up all that 
is included in “natural religion” into itself—intensify- 
ing its naturalness, indeed, so enriching and amplifying 
all that is best and purest in man’s spontaneous thought 
of God that, rightly understood, the one most supremely 


/ natural and satisfying thing in the world is for a man 


to be a Christian. From this point of view we may 
most happily plan for winning our children to Christ; 
the most sacred and most beautiful task to which man’s 
powers of heart and mind can be devoted. 

Is it not evident that, since “‘our basal tendencies de- 
termine our basal interests,’ we do well to know some- 
thing of the child’s readiness and capacity for response? 
Underlying the present study, therefore, must be the 
question: With what basal or instinctive tendencies 
is the child endowed which make for his normal re- 
ligious development ? 

If the idea of God, as Locke was doubtless right 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 87 


in saying, is a native intuition of the human mind, 
by which he meant that so soon as the child is able to 
understand the word “God” he at once recognises it as 
representing a reality directly known, we are on safe 
ground in regarding religion as allied with instinctive 
tendencies. It is potentially ours by nature before it 
becomes actually ours by experience. As Helen Keller, 
the blind deaf-mute from an accident in infancy, re- 
plied to Bishop Potter, when (the gateways of her 
mind being marvellously opened) he began to give her 
religious instruction and sought to convey the idea of 
God: “I have always known It in my thoughts, but I 
have not known Its name.”’ 

A little careful study will enable us to see in what 
way the child’s instinctive tendencies may be rete 
as related to his religious development. 

I. We may begin with one or two general considera- 
tions. In the first place, the impulse to think is born 
with us. How soon the mind of the child awakes to 
the wonder of everything, and asks questions to many 
of which religion, especially the Christian religion, 
alone gives satisfying answers! Christianity writes 
the name of God as the All-Father across creation’s 
page. It tells us, for example, as Jesus so beautifully 
taught, that birds and flowers are both objects, and 
tokens, of His love and care. These things, that were 
near to the heart of Jesus, are near also to the heart 
of the child. Christ’s attitude to the wild flower and 
the bird are, in quality, the same as the child’s atti- 
tude. The child’s attitude to God is, in quality, the 
same as Christ’s attitude to God, so soon as the child 
understands the name of God in the light of Christ’s 


88 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


revelation. Quite spontaneously a little child in a 
Liverpool Infant’s Day School corrected her teacher, 
who was describing the scene of Moses and the burn- 
ing bush, and saying, “And Moses was beginning to 
be just a little bit afraid.’ “Why,” said the child, 
“should he be afraid? God 1s a good man.” 

Jesus and children, to put it very simply, are—as 
in His gracious and beautiful life on earth they were— 
naturally at home with each other. Quite reverently 
one may say, in view of Christ’s own words, “Of such 
is the Kingdom of Heaven,’ that Christ and children 
are interested in the same beautiful and natural way 
in the same beautiful and natural things. The thought 
of God which so filled the heart and mind of Jesus 
Christ easily finds its way into the heart and mind of 
the child. Jesus and children are naturally friends. 
That is what we mean by calling Him “the children’s 
Friend.” All that is necessary on our part is to heed 
the Divine behest: “Suffer the little children to come 
unto Me; and forbid them not.” The question at once 
puts itself: How may we actually help the children to 
come? The mothers of Salem had discovered the 
secret. They brought, in many cases no doubt carried, 
their little children to Jesus “that He might touch 
them.’ ‘Their action was in its own way as symbolical 
as was Christ’s response when He took them up in 
His arms and blessed them. His words “Suffer them 
to come,” however, imply one thing more; and that 
the most vital of all. They suggest not only that Jesus 
wanted them, but that the little ones were showing 
their own eagerness and “wanted to go” to Him. 
That kind Friend, Whom they trusted at sight and Who 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 89 


understood them! “Oh, let them come!’ said Jesus. 

Our part, therefore, as parents or teachers is, so to | 
speak, to put the children in the way of Jesus; to \ 
bring them consciously to where He is. If we have 
our own regular meeting-times or meeting places with 
Him, our children will know of it, and will be deeply 
impressed and influenced by it. Actual experience has 
proved this many times. If our daily practice shows— 
and it is true enough whether our practice shows it or 
not—that we cannot live without Jesus Christ, our chil- 
dren will grow to know Him, and will be irresistibly 
won into His fellowship. To illustrate in a simple 
way. In the village where the writer lives there is a 
little church to which a father and a mother came 
regularly with their children on Sunday mornings. 
One little girl of five or six used to enter into it all so 
heartily that her voice was heard delightfully filling up 
the intervals between the lines of hymns or between 
the verses. Before she was seven she became very ill, 
and was soon to leave her earthly home. Her mother 
was one day at her bedside, talking with her and trying 
to say words of farewell. The child listened tenderly 
enough, and then replied, “I love dadda and mamma 
very much; but I love Jesus best.” In that case the 
little chapel and the Sunday morning singing in the 
House of Jesus helped to strengthen the hold of the 
Divine love upon the child’s heart. It helped to put 
the child in the way of Jesus. And that is really the | 
chief part of our task: to bring the children and Jesus © 
together. Not to teach much, not to plead or to urge, 
but to bring them near to Him that He may “touch 
them,” 


90 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


II. Next, a word or two from the point of view of 
the normal development of childhood and youth. 

(1) So far as the infant years are concerned, they 
are the parents’ hour of opportunity. The teacher 
is by the nature of the case well nigh at a loss. Re- 
ligion almost must be of and from the home. But in 
childhood proper, say from the sixth to the end of 
the ninth year, school of some kind is necessary to sup- 
port and, so to say, objectify the child’s religious ex- 
perience. The home still takes the lead, but school 
comes in to corroborate and to reinforce, and to broaden 
the basis of the child’s religious experience. Nothing 
that it is in a teacher’s heart to impart is lost upon 
the child in the Day School. But the Sunday School, 
with its essential Primary Department, probably counts 
for more. 

A very distinguished teacher has called these years 
of childhood the period of the “birth of a character.” 
Quite distinctly, it may be a period of religious choice, 
amounting almost to religious decision ; in some cases— 
though perhaps not normally—actually amounting to 
religious decision. An attachment may be forged be- 
tween the soul of the child and Jesus Christ which no 
after experience will ever completely sunder. 

Evidently, it will be a help to us to know as in- 
timately as we can the heart and mind of the child 
during these years. Psychologically speaking, two fea- 
tures are in the foreground. (1) The enjoyment of 
the world in its rich and varied- appeal to his sense- 
powers the child has carried forward in an intensified 
form from his “infant” years. Sights, sounds, people, 
behaviours—in actual experience or as idealised in 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 91 


picture and story—enter into the child’s growing con- 
ception of the world he lives in, enter absorbingly and 
quickeningly. The richer and the more filled with the 
beautiful the appeal is the better. (2) The wonder- 
impulse being now also, relatively speaking, at its 
height, the world—the one world, seen and unseen— 
becomes naturally to him God’s wonder-world. He en- 
joys the Book of Revelation; and he understands it 
better than the average grown-up person does. The 
Bible, as he knows and loves it, is his Wonder Picture 
Book. Religion need not be separately defined or spe- 
cialised for the child. It is a natural interpretive light 
which illumines all his experience, casting the halo of 
higher glory about the things that excite his wonder. 

The essence of a child’s religion lies in his openness 
to the wonders of the Divine, and in an intuitive un- 
derstanding and instinctive acceptance of these wonders 
as Divine. The world, if so regarded by those about 
him, easily becomes God’s world to him; peopled with 
angels as well as men; glorified by all that he knows 
about Jesus Christ. It was not by accident that it was 
Christ Who first really called the world’s attention to 
the freshness and fulness of the child’s mind and heart 
and spirit—filled with the very life and glory of the 
Kingdom of Heaven. 

Though it is well thus to emphasise the naturalness 
of religion and its meaning in terms of the tender and 
beauty-loving instincts of childhood; we need to re- 
member not only that wonder merges into reverence and 
awe, and thus becomes worship, but also that awe and 
the reverence which the Old Testament describes as 
“the fear of the Lorp”’ may be awakened independently. 


92 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


The thunderstorm has to be reckoned with no less than 
the flower ; the wind that tears up the trees no less than 
the birds that nest in them. The greatness and the 
might of God, whom somehow these phenomena also 
reveal, make His loving kindness more wonderful to 
the child, and to us all. But one deliberately says less 
on this point, because there is so real a danger of our 
touching upon the grandeur of God, in which His 
might and His beauty are blended, with too little care. 
There is a risk (of which those who have observed how 
prone some religious workers are to use the Divine 
Name glibly, and even in humorous connections, will 
be aware) that the holiest and the highest should lose 
its awesomeness for us by familiarity. Once let a 
child hear a “religious joke,” and no amount of teach- 
ing from the same lips can ever efface its ill effects; 
nor can the same lips pick up the thread of religious 
teaching with the same unmarred effect, whether the 
child hears the joke or not. Sitce, then, it is easier 
to be true to ourselves when we are discovering to chil- 
dren the naturalness and the kindliness of Christ and 
of God, as Christ and nature and human love reveal 
Him, it is well for all concerned that it is this aspect of 
the Divine which fits the impulses and meets the in- 
ward hungers of childhood. 

(2) Our whole being with all its powers does not 
wake up at once. The life unfolds. Boyhood and 
girlhood, say, between the ages of nine and thirteen, 
differ considerably from childhood. Not because they 
“put away” any of childhood’s native impulses, but 
because they add new impulses to them. Intellect, the 
thought-powers of the mind, are rushing healthily to the 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 93 


fore. To go on massing experiences would create 
confusion. The period of sorting out impressions and 
of the quest of truth, accordingly, has dawned. We 
have passed from the period of the “birth of a char- 
acter” to the period of the “nourishment of a char-v 
acter.” 

The first ingredients of faith have already appeared 
in the child’s eager acceptance of experience, and in 
his wonder at the wonderful. But there are other 
ingredients in full-grown faith. And the way of 
these is prepared, and the beginning made in boyhood. 
For faith has to be “the proving of things not seen,” 
the offspring of clear judgment concerning what is 
highest. Hence, the boy’s instinct for reality, for 
the positive truth of things, and for the play of his 
‘own intellect in the forming of opinions, is a vital 
phase in the unfolding of the religious consciousness. 
To the boy, the Bible is a book of the actual. He needs 
to meet with its real men, its real places, its real mean- 
ings. First and best of all, his Bible study needs to be 
the basis for opinions which he by the light of his own 
acute judgment—acute because so little overlaid—can 
arrive at as his own. 

If the child comes naturally to Jesus and to God 
by ways of the heart, ways of trust and gratitude and 
affection and sympathy, the boy (9 or 10 to 13) comes 
more naturally by ways of thought and judgment. 
Without excluding the play of affection, to him Christ 
and God appeal as the Supreme Truth. The most con- 
vincing token we have of this is in the one recorded 
scene from the boyhood of Jesus; a scene which more 
than one great artist—with what inadequacy they would 


94 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


be the first to confess—has striven to reproduce. Won- 
der and reverence are still there. This is seen in those 
mysterious words: “the things of My Father!” But 
most conspicuously, the impulse which caused the boy 
Jesus to remain behind and the centre of the scene as 
a whole are in the words: “They found Him sitting in 
the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and ask- 
ing them questions: and all that heard Him were 
amazed at His understanding and His answers.” ‘This 
one glimpse of the ideally typical boyhood of Jesus, 
shows us the natural attitude of mind and spirit between 
“childhood” and the “teens.” It is the birth-moment 
intellectually speaking, of sound judgment; in the re- 
ligious life, it is the natural birth-moment of a strong, 
clear faith. Lest one should be misunderstood, this 
does not mean that we must tell the boy what to be- 
lieve. On the contrary, we must place facts before 
him. Approach a parable as a “puzzle-story” (ages 9 
to 11), or a “problem-story” (ages 11 to 13), of which 
we have to find the meaning. Similarly, with many 
passages and lesson stories in the Bible. And let him, 
by learning to judge for himself, learn how to believe. 
That is the vital matter at this stage. And this the 
boy or girl between nine and thirteen is ready for. 

(3) From boyhood and girlhood the unfolding life 
passes on to the stage of adolescence. Before the youth 
in his “teens’’ life and the world open out as an arena, 
wherein he feels that he is called upon to play his part. 
This is the period for the “exercise of a character.” 
Now the uppermost note is the wistful,—the wistful 
and the practical. Life appeals to youth’s craving to 
be and to his will to be. He is conscious—more deeply 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 95 


than we commonly allow—of life’s two ways. Huis 
discovery of his power of choice and of responsibility 
for his own decision is accompanied by a keen sense of 
the fatefulness of his own choosing. When he would 
do good, evil, he finds, is ever present with him. It 
is a battle for the dear fellow. Every breaking of the 
Divine law leaves its scar, its consciousness of sever- 
ance. No fall is for him a “fall upwards!’ His heart 
craves restoration and harmony. Though he may not 
as yet (save in rare cases) be conscious of the power 
of God or of Christ to bear him through the fight, he 
is conscious of the need for coming back, and of the 
fact of coming back, into a state of forgiveness. This 
is, as perhaps with most of us, his experience of con- 
-version—the restoration of broken harmony; an ex- 
perience which may be many times repeated before we 
arrive at that fuller experience and Higher Conver- 
sion, the experience of the power of Christ “to keep 
us from falling, and at last to present us faultless.” 

What a memorable Sunday morning was that, when, 
unable owing to heavy snow to reach his own church 
in time, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a youth of fifteen, 
turned into a Primitive Methodist Chapel! No min- 
ister arrived.. One of the few laymen present spoke. 
He spoke awkwardly enough, to all outward seeming. 
There was little in his ten or twelve minutes’ sermon 
but the text, Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends 
of the earth; and the application, which was directly 
addressed to young Spurgeon. “Young man, you look 
very miserable. And you always will be miserable if 
you do not obey my text. Young man, look to Jesus! 
Look, look, look.” Says Spurgeon, “I did, and, then 


96 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


and there, the cloud was gone. I could have risen on 
the instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them 
. . . Oh, that somebody had told me before!’ Let 
any one of us just tell that story to a class of thought- 
ful youths in their early “‘teens.”’ It will have its effect. 
It points the way of a decision for which many at that 
age are ready. And if we could but follow it up a 
little later with a persuasion to listen to the Divine 
Voice that speaks within every one of us, taking Soc- 
rates and Marcus Aurelius, if you will, for examples 
as well as selections from numberless Biblical instances ; 
we shall have introduced them not only to the knowl- 
edge of Jesus Christ as Saviour but of the Holy Spirit 
as Guide and Strengthener. (Cf. Isa. xxx. 21; Prov. 
iii. 6; St. John xiv. 26.) 

It is a critical period. Somewhere about twelve and 
somewhere about sixteen are marked out as youth’s 
moments of decision. Conversion is “a natural 
phenomenon of adolescence.” During this period 
failure is poignantly felt. Now, if at any time, the 
instinct of fear, purified from its weaker phases (albeit 
even so sometimes serviceable), enters directly into 
the religious consciousness; the fear to lose life’s better 
possibilities, the fear of the lash of conscience, the 
fear attendant upon the sense of responsibility and of 
incurring penalty through sin. It is a moment of 
the heart’s natural hunger for Christ. 

And few are those in the early adolescent years 
who do not know that Christ is the One who, if they 
stand with Him, can decide the issue for them, and give 
them victory. “In working class districts,” said Mr. C. 
E. B. Russell, in his book on Manchester Boys, and 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 97 


none knew them better, “‘instances are not at all rare 
where the close friendship of two boys is based not 
only upon a natural liking one for the other, but upon 
a common wish to pursue an ideal which they may but 
partly realise, a perfection which they never hope to 
reach, yet do not abandon. They represent this ideal, 
seldom indeed in explicit utterance, but quite clearly and 
consciously by the name of Jesus Christ.” Whilst, as 
another says, “the years between twelve and fifteen 
often witness a deepening of the boy’s religious ex- 
periences; whilst he begins to realise more vividly the 
gulf between things as they are and things as they 
ought to be,” the hopeful words of Canon J. M. Wilson, 
when headmaster of Clifton, hold good: ‘We possess 
the ear of a boy during all those years when his aspira- 
tions rise highest, when reverence is most natural, when 
goodness and greatness are most inspiring.” 


We cannot here, even if one had oneself the vision, 
pursue the unfolding of so rich and profound a reality 
as the religious life in all its bearings; nor, indeed, more 
than touch upon the course of religious development 
as—were it free and in every way helped—it would 
naturally manifest itself in childhood, boyhood, and 
youth. Nor must the brevity with which one writes be 
allowed to give the faintest impression of watertight 
periods of unfolding. Growth is always both reminis- 
cent and anticipative. All that has ever entered con- 
structively into our life at any stage goes forward 
with us. Wonder, thoughtfulness, the chivalrous im- 
pulse to choose Christ as the Captain of our warfare, 
once awakened “perish never.” As for the antici- 


98 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


pativeness which belongs to growth, there is always a 
foregleam within the life of that next and larger thing 
which is to be: a foregleam in childhood of boyhood, 
a foregleam in boyhood of youth, and so on. And he 
alone really deals with the unfolding life helpfully 
and inspiringly who keeps the vision—not of child, boy, 
youth, as they appear before us merely, but also of 
the greater things already astir, of the life that is in 
the making. In religious education this is pre- 
eminently important. For the very spirit of religion 
is a going on to possess rather than a possessing; an 
achieving rather than an achievement; a “growth in 
grace’ rather than a “state of grace.” 

Just enough has been written to suggest that religious 
development does more than run alongside of our 
normal development; that, in an absolute sense, it 1s our 
normal development. There are beautiful words of F. 
W. Robertson’s in his sermon on The Early Develop- 
ment of Jesus. To recall them may sum up the spirit 
of what has been here so imperfectly written. “First 
religion is a kind of instinct; and if a child does not 
exhibit strong religious sensibilities, if he seem heed- 
less, untouched by awe or serious thoughts, still it 
is wiser not to interfere. He may be still at home with 
God ... Very mysterious, and beautiful, and won- 
derful, is God’s communing with the unconscious soul 
before reflection comes. . . . Our second life is re- 
flective. There is a moment when the life spontaneous 
passes into the life reflective. Those are fearful, soli- 
tary moments. The soul first meets God alone. So 
with Jacob when he saw the dream-ladder: so with 
Samuel when the Voice called him: so with Christ. So 


DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDHOOD 99 


with every son of man. God visits the soul in secrecy, 
in silence, and in solitariness. And the danger and 
duty of a teacher is twofold. Ist. To avoid hastening 
that feeling, hurrying that crisis-moment, which some 
call conversion. 2nd. To avoid crushing it. . 
When God comes to the heart, and His presence is 
shown by thoughtfulness, and seriousness, and distaste 
to common business, and loneliness, and solitary mus- 
ings, and a certain tone of melancholy, straightway we 
set ourselves to expostulate, to rebuke, to cheer, to pre- 
scribe amusement and gaieties, as the cure for serious- 
ness which seems out of place. Some of us have seen 
that tried; and, more fearful still, seen it succeed. And 
we have watched the still, small voice of God in the soul 
silenced. And we have seen the spirit of the world 
get its victim back again. ... And they that loved 
him did it.” 


CHAPTER VI 


y THE PROBLEM OF CHILD 
CONVERSION 


ALBERT D. BELDEN, B.D. 


Tue Christian Churches have passed during the last 
generation or so through a strong reaction against the 
idea of Child-Conversion. One of its earliest expres- 
sions was Horace Bushnell’s great work “Christian 
Nurture,” a book still worth careful reading. Bush- 
nell’s contention was that the children of our Christian 
homes should grow up, or rather, be nurtured up, in- 
sensibly into Christ. They should never know the 
time when they were not Christian. Any critical choice 
on their part should be to go out from the Church 
rather than to come in. In this way he believed that 
the Church could by sheer Christian nature “outpopu- 
late’ the world. Bushnell complained that current re- 
vivalistic methods made nothing of the family or the 
Church, treating even the children of Christian parents 
as though “they were so many Melchisedecs in their 
religious nature, only not righteous at all—without 
father or mother, without descent.” 

This protest was justified largely by the harsh and 
condemnatory attitude of much of the Evangelicism of 
the period towards the child. Whilst, however, we may 
agree to a certain value in his point of view as compared 


with the somewhat crude and ultra-adult child-evan- 
100 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 101 


gelism that called forth his protest, yet a good deal of 
water has flown under the bridge since then, and the 
rise of modern psychology has prepared the way for a 
more comprehensive view of the subject. 


THE UNSULLIED LIFE 


There is scarcely a problem of more poignant interest 
for Christian people than this one. Every true parent 
knows the unutterable yearning of the father-mother- 
heart over the moral and spiritual destiny of its off- 
spring. “What shall this child be?” is the constant re- 
frain of thought in the true Child-Lover whether he be 
priest or minister, teacher or parent. Great as may be 
‘the achievement of turning an adult sinner from his 
drunkenness or profligacy to a new life in Christ, it is 
not the supreme Christian achievement. Greater far 
is it so to lead, so to influence, the innocent child that 
it is brought through to decided, consecrated, Christian 
manhood or womanhood unsullied and unspoiled. No 
one can deny that this is the supreme thing to accom- 
plish—prevention is better than cure—the conservation 
of the whole life for Christ is better than the reclama- 
tion of a part, especially of a part depreciated in value 
by the consequences of sin. The present writer stresses 
this valuation because the apathy still existent in the 
Churches with regard to the Christian nurture of child- 
life is very gross, being due of course to the unconscious 
bias and prejudice of the adult-mind in favour of adult 
interests. If once the vision of the successful Con- 
servation of the total Childhood of the Church in this 
generation laid hold upon the mind of the Christian 


102 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


Community as a whole, there would be such a leap for- 
ward in interest and achievement as would provide a 
new and startling era of Christian witness. In large 
measure the findings of modern psychology encourage 
us to hope for a success of this magnitude, for they are 
unveiling in a dramatic and convincing way both the 
urgent need of child-life for religion and the deeper in- 
stinctive movements of the child-soul towards the ap- 
propriate satisfaction for its need. 


FROM ONE EXTREME TO ANOTHER 


The opposition to the idea of Child-conversion has 
been due in large measure to reaction against the Puri- 
tan and Calvinistic view of the child as being “born in 
sin’ and “totally depraved” by reason of its relation 
to Adam, and needing in its nature, therefore, a more 
or less violent wrench away from sin. This violent or 
dramatic right-about-face was its conversion. Un- 
doubtedly the doctrine tended to produce its own appro- 
priate results. Children are born sub-conscious tmita- 
tors, and they soak up the mental and emotional atmos- 
pheres of their adult society as sponges soak up water. 
Being so taught, therefore, and being surrounded by 
such religious expectancy, with vivid examples of 
adult conversions of this type constantly brought to 
their notice or present in the thought and feeling about 
them, it is not surprising that they themselves fre- 
quently responded in just this way and presented in- 
stances of child-conversation accompanied by great 
emotional upheaval and convulsion and often consider- 
able mental torture and strain. Whatever view domi- 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 103 


nates the adult mind, because of the atmosphere it 
creates, tends to reflect itself in the actual experience 
of the children. Similarly, in the modern absence of 
belief in convulsion conversion, such changes amongst 
the children seldom occur even when methods that 
assume them are used, the reason being that there is no 
longer exerted upon the minds of the children the 
pressure of a real belief in such stormy ideas. Unfortu- 
nately, however, we have swung so far in the opposite 
direction that we are in grave peril of so idealising the 
child-nature as to expect nothing in the shape of a 
religious crisis. We tend to make the process now so 
placid and so uneventful that issues are blunted and 
blurred, and what should be a critical and essentially 
romantic blossoming of the child’s spiritual powers is 
left all too often at a very dull and trivial level of ex- 
perience. If it is possible for souls to become Christian 
so gradually, so uneventfully, that they hardly know 
when or where they pass the rubicon, and could 
scarcely tell you at any one time if they have “arrived” 
or not, surely something vital in the perspective of 
Christian experience is lacking. This is the danger that _ 
threatens us—the peril of a colourless discipleship. 


THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CHILD 


What is the truth as to the moral condition of the 
child? The view of modern psychology is that the child 
is born neither good nor evil, but with a capacity for 
either. To begin with the infant is a delightful litJe 
animal, non-moral but differing from all other animals 
in the sacred potentialities of moral and spiritual being 


104 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


that it possesses. —Two mighty Shadows bend above its 
cradle prepared to distil themselves in sublime or awful 
baptism. The one is the Shadow of the world—blended 
of Adult Character on the one hand—the result of 
the accumulated wrong choices of the past—and En- 
vironing Social Institutions in so far as they are un- 
christian on the other. This is the Shadow of Original 
Sin—a shadow that pursues us not only in the form 
of Heredity, but much more in our Social Inheritance. 
The other is the Shadow of the Almighty and the All- 
Good. If Original Sin is a terrible fact, Original 
Goodness is a greater fact. This greater fact has also 
its twofold human channel in the accumulated good 
choices of the past and in environing social institu- 
tions in so far as they are Christian. This Shadow, 
however, attends us in a threefold form. Heredity, 
Social Inheritance, and in Person—the ever-brooding 
Holy Spirit of God. 

Now the individual child follows in general the line 
of development of the race itself. First, then, comes 
the animal-existence, the principle of which is pre- 
dominantly that of Self-Preservation developing to an 
intense degree the custom or ethic of Self-Preference. 
This condition in Man would seem to be the climax of 
God’s purpose in Nature which is obviously to produce 
the Individualised Soul—the clearly outlined self-con- 
scious Ego. As Benjamin Kidd has shown us so 
clearly in his “Science of Power’’ the struggle for self 
is “the law of individual growth.”” Consequently—and 
Providentially—the first decade of a child’s life is essen- 
tially a self-regarding period. Says one authority con- 
cerning the years one to six—‘It is the animal, the 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 105 


egoistic feelings, those that arise and end in the child’s 
physical and animal nature, that are central.” And, 
again, “The instinctive feelings of hunger and thirst, 
of pain and pleasure, of curiosity and wonder, of selfish- 
ness and cruelty, fear and anger, are prominent.” If 
this is true no wonder our forefathers were misled 
about the child-nature when contrasting it with Chris- 
tian character. They did not realise as we do that this 
is an inheritance from the level of Nature, and, what 
is more, a necessary inheritance if the soul is to become 
as strongly individualised as a truly moral life demands. 
It is by this very means that the child comes to that con- 
dition so aptly expressed by Tennyson in “In Memo- 
riam”’ : 

“But as he grows he gathers much 

And learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘Me’ 


And finds ‘I am not what I see’ 
And other than the things I touch. 


So rounds he to a separate mind 
From whence clear memory may begin 
As thro’ the frame that binds him in 
His isolation grows defined.” 


CONVERSION AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON 


Now, if we allow modern psychology to continue 
our story of the development of the child-soul it will 
begin at this point to speak in terms that approach 
very near to those of Christian Evangelism. It advises 
us that as the adolescent stage begins, from the age 
of ten onwards, there is a natural conversion of the 
child-mind away from this predominant interest in it- 


106 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


self to an awakening interest in others. Should the 
child be under the influence of altruistic or Christian 
teaching such a change is likely to be accelerated and 
rendered more permanent. Now, whilst Psychology 
as a science does not presume to utter a verdict upon 
the relationship of this change to Religion, there are 
certain schools of psychological thought that would 
explain this change as being due merely to those bodily 
developments which shape the life for its social purposes 
of sex and reproduction. They would go on to explain 
the outburst of religious interest that often accompanies 
the change as due in the main to the transference of 
energy from the necessarily repressed sex-instinct. Re- 
ligion is one of the main forms under which the sex- 
instinct becomes “‘sublimated’””—that is directed towards 
a more sublime end. Mr. Chapman Cohen presents this 
type of interpretation, with a distinct bias against re- 
ligion, rather elaborately in his “Religion and Sex.” 
It is, however, an interpretation which begs the question 
at issue, for it leaves untouched all consideration of 
whether a higher directive force is necessary behind 
that sublimation if it is to carry with it a harmonising 
of the whole personality. 


HIGHER INSTINCTS FOR HIGHER DESTINY 


Infinitely preferable is the interpretation offered by 
a Christian Psychology—such as is represented by 
Prof. Mackenzie’s excellent little book on “Modern 
Psychology and Christian Personality,’ which inter- 
prets this movement in the child-soul as being the 
expression of an instinct more radical than any: of 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 107 


the instincts common to man and the animal world. 
Just as a person travelling in a lift rises to a level at 
which the wealth of other departments lie open to 
him, so humanity, rising from the animal level, finds 
itself registering the pressure of new and richer in- 
stincts. These new and vaster instincts are three in 
number: Self-Hood or Individuality, Reason and Con- 
science, and they represent the pressure of a New 
Order of Divine Life—they are higher instincts for 
higher destiny. | 

It is impossible, and would be inappropriate, in the 
scope of this chapter to survey the total issue between 
religion and psychology but it may suffice to indicate 
briefly that in acquiescing, as it does, in the absolute 
and urgent need for the “sublimation” of our animal- 
instincts, the materialistic school of psychology gives 
away its case against religion. For religion is notori- 
ously the most successful of all sublimating powers. 
Yet, if religion be emptied of reality—if belief in its 
objective validity is discredited—how shall this urgent 
need for sublimation be met? Psychology is in danger 
of accompanying its analysis of the human mind with 
such bias as to bring the highest operations of that 
mind to a standstill like the small boy who breaks the 
works of his watch and then complains that it doesn’t 
tell him the time. 


THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION 


The facts are not denied; they are as science states; 
it is the interpretation of the facts that makes all the 
difference. To the average mind it would seem 


108 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


peculiarly providential that, just when so devastating 
a passion as the sex-instinct—and one so capable of 
being turned to essentially selfish ends—is rising into 
power in the child’s experience, a deeper instinct for 
others, and, therefore, for the supreme Other, should 
come into evidence as a restraining and guiding force. 
It does not seem extravagant, nor can it be judged 
unscientific, to speak of this as the Overshadowing 
of the young life by Divine Grace, by the Holy Spirit 
of God. Certainly we cannot fail to see how this 
striking and fundamental change in the child-soul 
approximates to the typical Conversion of the Chris- 
tian Gospel. From Self to Others—from Self-Pres- 
ervation to Self-Sacrifice, from the service of one’s 
own interest to that service of God which is found 
in the service of humanity even to “the least of these 
my brethren’”—this is the Great Change that wells 
up from God through Nature, and that Jesus Christ 
lived and died and reigns to make finally secure in 
the souls of men. 

Imagine a plant meant to climb a very high trellis 
being started some little distance from it, at the foot 
of a stake thrust in the ground. Round and round 
the stake it grows, but at last it flings a wider sweep 
of tendril and lays hold upon the trellis. Attached to 
the trellis, it begins a new life of richer scope. Had 
it failed of attachment to the trellis, it would have 
speedily exhausted the stake and its life have been 
stunted and spoiled. So the child-soul grows first 
along the line of self-regarding individualism. This 
is permitted in the hope that the child will carry a 
strong individuality into the wider movement yet to 


¢ 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 109 


come, when it shall attach itself to the new and limit- 
less line of altruism and the love of God. 

To envisage this movement of God in the Child- 
Soul—to realise that it is present in some degree in 
every child—is a great gain for the evangelist. If it 
explains the success of even crude and mischievous 
methods in the past, it holds promise of an enormous 
harvest for the evangelism that at last understands. 

The investigators into this matter conducted by 
such expert Christian psychologists as Dr. Starbuck 
and Professor George Coe are by this time familiar 
in the Churches, and the impressive statistics they 
have collected may be studied in their well-known 
volumes. 

The general result arrived at in these investigations 
is that of the cases of conversion dealt with, 75 per 
cent. occurred between the ages of 12 and 20, and 
that there is a strong grouping of cases around the 
periods 12-13, 16-17, and 19-20. 

It has been suggested that too much can be made 
of the connection between adolescence and conversion, 
on the ground that the doctrine of conversion has in 
the past derived its strongest support from men of the 
type of St. Paul, John Wesley, or George Fox, who 
were not converted till later in life. Whilst we may 
agree that Dr. Starbuck is too pessimistic when he 
says that “if conversion has not occurred before 20 
the chances are small that it will ever be experienced” 
we must nevertheless bear in mind the’ fact that it is 
not until recent years—a period marked by the growth 
of the Sunday School movement—that the religious 
experiences of the adolescent have been taken very 


110 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


seriously. Doubtless an enquiry into the condition 
of men like Wesley and Fox during adolescence would 
bear out the emphasis placed upon this period by mod- 
ern psychology. The present writer, however, desires 
humbly to offer some personal judgments upon this 
matter. In a recently held meeting of some twenty 
Free Church ministers each one present told briefly 
the story of his critical awakening or conversion to 
the religious life. The result was a striking con- 
firmation of the importance of adolescence. The aver- 
age age of such experiences was 14 years, and strong 
emphasis was placed in a number of cases upon “sec- 
ond awakenings,”’ so much so that the interesting sug- 
gestion was made that doubtless certain types are 
converted in stages. Every experienced Christian 
knows how strangely, even sadly, possible it is always 
to find some greater depth, some further degree yet , 
to go, in personal surrender to God. This fact tends 
to corroborate a further finding of modern psychology 
to the effect that sudden ebullitions of critical and 
emotional religious change are, as it were, wave-crests 
of a movement that is much more prolonged than it 
appears to be. Mr. R. H. Thouless in his excellent 
“Introduction to the Psychology of Religion,” borrow- 
ing a phrase from Dr. Jung, describes this movement 
as “unconscious incubation,” and says, “We seem able ¥ 
to give an adequate account of this (adult conversion) 
by assuming the presence of a growing sentiment kept 
unconscious by a resistance, which finally overthrows 
that resistance and establishes itself in a dominant 
position in the conscious life.” Now is there not 
here, in this conception of the relation between sub- 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 111 


conscious and conscious elements of the conversion 
experience, a twofold suggestion of great value? 
First, it suggests very strongly that the climacteric 
periods of youthful conversion already noticed, have 
also been preceded by “unconscious incubation,” that 
indeed they may be late in their arrival because this 
deeper process in the soul has lacked attention. Sec- 
ondly, it suggests that the chief difference between what 
we may call religious awakening or gradual conver- 
sion and decisive or critical conversion is due not to 
any difference in their inherent spiritual value, but 
simply to the degree and character of resistances due 
to the moral and spiritual experiences of childhood 
or due purely to temperament and type. 

It is the present writer’s strong conviction that in 
dealing with the children we are continually a year or 
so too late. He believes that the ages referred to as 
climacteric are so because they represent cases which 
have occurred in the absence of a scientific precision in 
this matter. They represent the old haphazard “hit or 
miss” evangelism. The well-known reserve that set- 
tles down upon the adolescent—due to his difficulty in 
understanding himself and the failure of adults to 
enlighten him—causes him to hide much of his secret 
eager interest in religion. The rise of the gang- 
instinct too, tends to make him conform to the type 
in possession, viz., the reserved misunderstood type 
outwardly nonchalant in regard to religion. In other 
words, we are faced with the vicious circle of youth 
uninstructed in sex becoming reserved and hiding its 
deeper feelings, and in its turn creating a fashion of 
such reserve amongst fresh adolescents as they arrive. 


112 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


Yet God has woven into the very physical structure 
of youth the evidence of the true high-tide of the 
spirit. The physical change strikes the hour for not 
only does religion then become a most urgent need, 
but the mind instinctively grows tender to its recep- 
tion. The age of puberty should be the age at which 
the Christian influences of Home and Church should 
move harmoniously to their appointed climax in the 
definite acceptance by the Child-Soul of its Saviour. 


INFERENCES AS TO METHOD 


From the foregoing facts there are certain indica- 
tions as to the method of our evangelism of the chil- 
dren. Remembering the old dictum “forced develop- 
ment at one stage means arrested development at a» 
later’? we shall beware of subjecting children of tender 
pre-adolescent years to the challenge for decision. 
Bearing in mind also the pressure of the herd-instinct 
upon the adolescent we shall beware of inducing ado- 
lescents to take public action which may be the merest 
imitation of older example. It cannot be too strongly 
emphasised that if Conversion is as we have defined 
it—the movement of the highly Individualised Soul 
away from its own self-centre to free alliance with 
Others in and with God—it must be essentially the 
act of an individual, and the soul’s full responsibility 
must be fostered and mustered as completely as pos- 
sible. 

This does not mean that public evangelism of ado- 
lescents is a mistake. We have no more right to de- 
prive youth of the inspiration and constraint of com- 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 113 


mon human feeling than any other age, but it does 
mean that the approach to decision should be of a 
personal and private rather than a public kind. It is 
a real injury to the child-soul to hurry it to a premature 
decision from which it must inevitably react. Whereas, 
if the child is carried in his whole self into a decision 
the poles of which he clearly visualises, with time for 
reflection and with the emphasis placed, by such a 
method, upon the dignity of his self-hood in relation 
to God, such a decision can hardly fail to be final and 
permanent. 

This means, of course, that the conversion of the 
child is to be in the main the work, under God, of 
its parents, its teachers, its minister—the occasional 
evangelist fitting himself into the work they have 
done with the utmost discretion. We must insist that 
parents are deeply responsible for the spiritual salva- . 
tion of their children. If the confidence of the child 
is to be retained in the years of adolescence, there must 
be wisely graded sex-instruction—nothing else can pre- 
vent the cloud of reserve descending upon their rela- 
tionship. Parents need to be advised that a wealth of 
reward in affection and trust awaits their discharge of 
this sacred stewardship. 

Beyond the parents the Sunday School or Bible 
Class teacher and the Pastor have their place, and 
with this threefold influence well harmonised it ought 
to be possible to bring every child in the Church to 
its Golden Hour with God. This means keeping care- 
ful watch on all the adolescents of our Christian Com- 
munities—letting none slip through these years un- 
guided and unshepherded. The evangelist may think 


114 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


that this leaves little place for him, but that is not 
so. We need very badly preachers to adolescents who 
can convey the true religious atmosphere in a really 
powerful way. Their work is to stimulate, to clarify 
and to interpret the workings of these new Divine 
impulses towards Otherness in the soul of youth. We 
gather our adolescents for their own specific forms 
of worship all too seldom and study their needs in 
this way all too little. There will always be room for 
the specialist preacher to the young. But the harvest 
is best reaped, blade by blade, plant by plant, and if 
possible by those whose relationship to the child 1s 
confidential and more permanent. 


THE SENSE OF SIN 


One last question remains. ' Little has been said in 
the foregoing about that sense of sin which has always 
been assumed traditionally to accompany Christian 
Conversion, Yet surely never was there a greater 
fallacy than to imagine that folk become sensible of 
sin simply by being told that they are sinful. To 
argue direct from Biblical statement to the child-mind 
that it must as a matter of duty consider itself sinful 
is artificial in the extreme. The lives of hosts of 
our Christian Children are sublimely innocent of wilful 
sin. The inherent selfishness of the animal-nature is 
eventually challenged by the rise of the social-instinct, 
and this by its presentation of a new ideal at once 
precipitates the sense of sin. This can be assumed as 
a constant factor in the adolescent though its intensity 
may differ. But over and above this a certain tendency 
to shame results from the strain and stress of sex- 


THE PROBLEM OF CHILD CONVERSION 115 


interest and control. Indeed, the deep sense of un- 
worthiness and depression that afflicts the adolescent 
calls rather for our sympathy and aid than for our 
exploitation in the interests of a theological tradition. 
If the Christian Ideal is plainly enough presented the 
sense of sin will take care of itself. Moreover, if the 
sense of sin is interpreted, as it should be, as being 
the shadow cast upon the imperfect by the Perfect, 
the pressure of the Divine upon the human, then it 
will be encouraged and not discouraged and made a 
means of blessing and not an obstruction. 

In conclusion, let us affirm that there are evidently 
three periods in life when the human soul in its nat- 
ural orbit swings full into the rays of the Sun of 
our Souls. First, when childhood breaks into Youth 
and with the rise of the Other-regarding instincts 
yearns for the supreme and Perfect Other. Secondly, 
when Youth breaks into Manhood and Womanhood 
and the soul yearns to find the Best Life for itself 
and those it loves. Thirdly, when Manhood and 
Womanhood cross the line between Middle-Life and 
Age—when thoughts of lost opportunity and judgment 
lie heavily on the soul and when strange yearnings 
for deeper change and final salvation are felt. 

It is well if the Church has its message and its 
gift of Divine power for the human soul in these 
later periods—or at any time in between when the 
struggle between Good and Evil in the soul sinks be- 
low the surface. But best of all is it to persuade the 
soul in its first great visitation to fulfil its destiny of 
dedication and to taste, at the Divinely appointed hour, 
the ineffable joy of responsible conscious union with 
its Maker and its God. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TAS AN 
EVANGELISING AGENCY 


ERNEST H. HAYES 


From its very nature and purpose, the Sunday School 
should be the most fruitful evangelising agency con- 
nected with the Church. Imagine for a moment the 
Church stripped of the young life that gathers in and 
around its Sunday School, and then estimate its chances 
of soul-winning in the community! Or cut out from 
the membership roll of the Church those members who 
have been recruited directly through the evangelistic 
work of the Sunday School, and the remnant would be 
both weak and small. 

The fact is that, to a degree rarely comprehended 
by the leaders of the Church, the Sunday School side 
of its work is vital to its very existence. Under its 
charter the School gathers about sixty per cent. of 
the children of the land within its walls week by week 
for religious instruction, and it requires no great exer- 
cise of the imagination to grasp the enormous field 
for evangelising the country offered by the School. 
Further, the fact that on an average seventy-five per 
cent. of the Sunday scholars come from homes not 
otherwise connected with any form of organised Chris- 
tianity, has an important bearing on this subject.. 


If it is conceded that the School gathers and trains 
116 


SCHOOL AS AN EVANGELISING AGENCY 117 


the children for the Church, the next point for inves- 
tigation is the extent to which the average School is 
functioning properly as an evangelising agency. This 
question is often asked to-day by. critics of the graded 
method of Sunday School teaching, like the one who 
wrote to a religious paper recently asking for any 
direct testimony as to whether “there are more con- 
versions among the little ones.” We must at the out- 
set dissociate ourselves from those who measure the 
success of a Sunday School by the standards of the 
successful evangelist among adults. The time has 
gone by, surely, when enthusiastic but misguided min- 
isters or school officers seek to organise an “earnest 
united effort to secure the conversion of the whole 
school.” A record of such an effort, carried through 
some years ago in a school of three hundred members, 
deserves mention here as an example of a negative 
kind.* In this case the minister and superintendent 
put a “wholesale conversion’? scheme before the 
teachers, | 

“After a few Sabbaths’ teaching to this end the 
minister said, standing in the pulpit after the opening 
exercises : ‘If any of the pupils desire to become Chris- 
tians, let them come to these vacant seats at my right.’ 
I bowed my head to ask that some would come, but | 
the prayer was never offered, for the sound as of an 
army marching was heard, and I raised my head just 
as the Pastor said (seeing almost the entire school 
upon their feet) ‘Remain where you are; we will come 
to you.’ I shall never forget that afternoon. The 
Sabbath School convened at 2.30, and we were kept 

* Reported in the Christian Herald, April 16, 1913. 


118 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


working with each one individually, till nearly time for 
evening service. I believe that story could be dupli- 
cated in many a Sabbath School, if only the right 
means were employed and officers and teachers were all 
brought to feel their responsibility.” 

Knowing the gregarious instincts of children we 
can be quite certain that the last sentence in this report 
is perfectly accurate. We have seen children of four 
and five trooping into an enquiry room when once a 
move has been made in that direction by other children, 
like lambs following a flock. Any preacher or teacher 
who dares to use the ordinary appeals to urgent peni- 
tence, with denunciation of gross sins, and threats of 
Divine anger, that are the stock-in-trade of the mis- 
sioner to adults, can get the above results at any time 
in any Sunday School session. ' 

But apart from the outrage to child nature of such 
methods, it can easily be demonstrated that there is 
little, if any, gain to the Church that makes such use 
of its Sunday School. Not only the teaching of mod- 
ern psychology, but practical experience gained from 
the new methods of religious education, compel us to 
revise our tests and find a new standard of evangelism 
in Sunday School work. Since we are forced to the 
conviction that “‘child conversion,” as the term is com- 
monly understood, is not only unnatural but unscrip- 
tural, we must seek other and better ways of making use 
of the Sunday School as an organisation for winning 
the children for Christ. In brief, we have to substitute 
an educational evangelism, based on the natural re- 
ligion of a child, for an evangelism of conversion based 
on the experience of an adult. | 


SCHOOL AS AN EVANGELISING AGENCY 119 


Fortunately, we are not taking a leap into the dark, 
nor trying out a novel theory, when we urge a policy 
of educational evangelism. Ever since the founding 
of Christian homes by Christian parents, this method 
has been tried and found successful—in other words, 
educational evangelism is as old as Christianity itself. 
It is the New Testament way of Winning the Children 
for Christ. Although St. Paul claimed Timothy as 
his son in Christ, it is clear from his letter to his be- 
loved disciple that he recognised that the foundations 
of character had been laid for Timothy by his grand- 
mother Lois, and his mother Eunice. St. Augustine 
has told us in his “Confessions” how he drank in the 
name of Jesus with his mother’s milk, with the result 
that at its best the world could never satisfy him. 

Henry Ward Beecher has placed on record that 
“more than any recognised influence of my father 
or my mother upon me, more than the social influ- 
ence of all the members of my father’s household; 
more, so far as I can trace it, or so far as I am made 
aware of it, than all the social influences of every 
kind, Christ has had the formation of my mind and 
of my disposition. My hidden ideals of what is beauti- _ 
ful I have drawn from Christ. My thoughts of what — 
is manly and noble and pure have almost all of them 
arisen from the Lord Jesus Christ . . . whenever 
there has been the necessity for it, I have sought— 
and at last almost spontaneously—to throw myself into 
the companionship of Christ; and early, by my imagi- 
nation, I could see Him standing and looking quietly 
and lovingly on me.’ * 


* “Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher,” vol. 1. 


120 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


Beecher’s experience takes us to the very heart of 
educational evangelism. Not by any sudden “right- 
about-face” as of a prodigal in the far country turning 
back to God, does a child become Christian, but by 
a gradual unfolding of the mind and heart. The ex- 
perience of countless Christians, nurtured in the at- 
mosphere of Christian homes, demonstrates to us how 
all the wealth of a developing personality can be cap- 
tivated by Jesus Christ when He is truly presented to 
_ the quick imagination and warm affection of the child. 

We suggest that the true function of the Sunday 
School is to provide that spiritual atmosphere and re- 
ligious training that its scholars have missed through 
not having the priceless privilege of being born into a 
Christian home. In other words, in the same way that 
many children from Christian homes naturally develop 
such a Christian character that they cannot definitely 
point to any time or place for their “conversion,” so 
under good teaching in a right atmosphere our Sunday 
scholars can be won for Christ by an educational evan- 
gelism. 

Let no one be frightened or prejudiced by that word 
“educational.”’ A method is not made less spiritual 
because it is educational. Jesus used the educational 
method of the parable and the paradox in all His 
teaching, and it was by an educational evangelism that 
He trained His first disciples until, by what we call 
to-day a “training question,’ He led Peter to discover 
for himself that illuminating truth that found expres- 
sion in the glowing confession, “Thou art the Christ.” 

The graded Sunday School, with its insistence on 
a spiritual atmosphere and its demand that training 


SCHOOL AS AN EVANGELISING AGENCY 121 


in worship shall be included in its curriculum, has a, 
genius for winning the children for Christ in a way 
both natural and Scriptural. The ungraded school 
cuts directly across child nature, and is therefore fight- 
ing to win the child for Christ with one arm tied be- 
hind its back. The problems of disorder, inattention 
and unproductive teaching that face the worker in 
ungraded schools, indicate how much that school is 
handicapped as an evangelising agency. It follows, 
therefore, that a first and long step towards success 
in winning the child is to grade the school, and by 
adopting the new methods make it a training ground 
for worship.* 

The use of graded lessons that present Jesus to the 
child in a fresh and developing light at each stage of 
its development, will do wonders in training the child 
for a Christian life. In a modern Primary depart- 
ment we find that the child will artlessly declare, “TI 
love Jesus,” without a tinge of priggish self-conscious- 
ness or artificial piety. No wonder that when such a 
child was asked by an evangelist of the old type “How 
long have you loved Him?” she replied, in open-eyed 
astonishment at such a senseless question. ‘Why, 
ever since I have known about Him, of course.” 

The Junior boy and girl will quite naturally make 
Jesus their hero when our Master is rightly presented 
to this hero-worshipping and might-admiring stage 
of development. Thus when educational evangelism 
is properly worked out through the Junior Department, 
we often find that about the eleventh birthday there 


* See The Child in the Midst, by Ernest H. Hayes, for a fuller 
treatment of the point, also Children’s Worship. 


122 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


comes a religious crisis in the scholar when quite spon- 
taneously Jesus will be chosen as the hero who outtops 
the crowd of heroes who command the adoration of 
children of this age. In many cases this dedication of 
the life to Jesus the Hero may become a permanent de- 
cision if the work of the Intermediate Department 
builds four-square on this foundation. With the com- 
ing of adolescence, with its craving for ideals, the wise 
teacher can present Jesus as the life ideal, with the 
result that scholars in their teens may be led to follow 
in the steps of Henry Ward Beecher and find their 
hidden ideals in Christ as he did. 

This brief and cursory survey of the graded Sunday 
School will indicate how an educational evangelism 
can be worked out by a method within reach of every 
School. This should enable us to look for the same 
results from the children of worldly parents that we 
may expect from those in Christian homes—for a 
Divine Providence has ordained that environment shall 
have greater power in a developing life than heredity. 
But how can one hour a week in Sunday School 
counteract the doubtful influence of a worldly home? 
The question will be asked, and it is a fair one. Much 
can be done by the concentrated work of the Sunday 
School session, but this must of course be followed 
up by catering for the spiritual and physical well-being 
of the scholars during the week, and by the unsparing 
service of the teacher. We can no longer call in the 
services of a special missioner to work up an emotional 
crisis that will secure the sudden “conversion” of the 
scholar as a kind of reward for the regular work of 
the teacher. Therefore we must aim to secure that 


SCHOOL AS AN EVANGELISING AGENCY 128 


every teacher becomes a soul-winner, not only by his 
lesson in the Sunday School, but by living the Christian 
life during the week, in the company of his scholars _ 
as often as may be. 

It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the point that the 
teacher’s intimacy with his scholars fits him, under the 
Holy Spirit’s blessing, to be the most successful type 
of evangelist that the Church can ever entrust with 
soul-winning work. 

It has been urged that a general policy of educa- 
tional evangelism cannot entirely take the place of the 
older method of special missions or campaigns. It 
must be admitted that under any system there is al- 
ways a peril lest the golden hour for decision be al- 
lowed to pass without a definite choice being made. 
It has always been recognised as a weakness in Sunday 
School work that minister, superintendent and teacher 
have each left it to the other to secure the conversion | 
or, as we prefer to call it, the dedication, of the scholars 
to Jesus Christ. To guard against this, many earnest 
teachers have welcomed the observance of Decision 
Day as an annual campaign for decision. Others have 
adopted the plan of using the scholar’s birthday as an 
appropriate item for broaching the all-important ques- 
tion. In some schools the annual Children’s Day or 
School Anniversary has been made the occasion for a 
special appeal to the older scholars to make the great 
surrender. 

Critics of these times and seasons for decision have 
argued that every day should be Decision Day, and 
that every lesson should have as its climax an earnest 
personal appeal for decision, whatever the subject may 


124 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


be. Other critics contend that this supremely impor- 
tant choice should not be pressed automatically on all 
scholars alike or in any stereotyped way, urging that 
we must respect the rights of the individual, and that 
the proper time for decision is at those psychological 
crises in the scholar’s development when the decision 
will be a natural and a permanent one. 

In order to test the practice of a number of Schools 
in this supremely important matter, a religious paper * 
a few years ago sent out a questionnaire to over five 
hundred Schools belonging to several denominations, 
and in widely separated localities, on this subject. 
Only one hundred and forty-two replies were received, 
and these showed that two-thirds of the Schools relied 
upon the observance of Decision Day for the one spe- 
cial effort to lead the scholars to decision for Christ. 
Only two Schools reported a continuous and systematic 
effort to secure the decision of every scholar. Fifteen 
Schools had no plan at all, while others had various 
ways, such as revival meetings, pastor’s classes, prayer 
for the unsaved, and “urging teachers to secure de- 
cision.” 

A careful examination of all the replies sent in did 
not produce very encouraging results from the point 
of view of securing decisions, and it was abundantly 
clear that a very large percentage of teen-age scholars 
do not get a direct personal invitation to accept Christ. 
A further question as to plans adopted for “keeping 
in touch with young converts to train them for Chris- 
tian service” revealed the disconcerting truth that not 
one-half of the Schools replying had any special plan 


* The Sunday School Times, 1919. 


SCHOOL AS AN EVANGELISING AGENCY 125 


whatever for follow-up work after decisions were 
made. 

After allowing for the fact that there is a risk in 
basing a general argument on special examples, it is 
clear that the Sunday School must largely fail as an 
evangelising agency unless definite steps are taken to 
ensure that every teen-age scholar at some time or 
in some way is urged to make a decision for Christ. 
Opinions may differ as to how this principle is to be 
carried out, but on the principle itself there is no room 
for discussion. Psychology has taught us that there is 
infinite variety in religious experience, but it has also 
made perfectly clear that God’s way with young life 
is to provide seasons of spiritual awakening through 
which all must pass. It is easier, therefore, to state 
our problem than to solve it. We must find a way of 
pressing the claims of Christ upon the individual dur- 
ing this period of religious awakening, and so plan 
our Sunday School work that no scholar passes out 
of this period or out of the School without having 
seriously considered the claims of Christ and His 
Church. And because the need is so urgent and the 
task is so delicate and individualistic, the alert Sunday 
School Teacher cannot be satisfied until he has dis- 
covered the golden moment for proposing the great 
question. Realising the delicate nature of his task, the 
Teacher will know that there is no short cut to success, 
no hard and fast rules to observe, no ready-made plan 
that can be applied. With some scholars it will be 
perfectly easy to secure a decision, for it will be the 
natural climax to the process of Christian education. 
Other scholars will need the impetus of a special occa- 


126 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


sion or the example of others to “step over the line,” 
but in every class group there will be some who by 
disposition or circumstances can only be approached 
after very careful and prayerful thought and through 
a most intimate knowledge. The records of evangel- 
istic work among adults show that some people fail 
to respond to any of the methods that ordinarily ap- 
peal, and eventually are won by a “chance” word or 
unexpected incident. In just the same way there are 
adolescents who are scared by, or are indifferent to, 
Decision Day appeals or ordinary ways of approach, 
and so must be the subjects of special plans. It is here 
that the Sunday School Teacher will often succeed 
after every one else has failed. 

The argument that individuality must be respected 
and that no evangelistic method: can be applied to all 
scholars indiscriminately, cannot be allowed to rule 
out definite times for decision in the Sunday School. 
Granted that we must proceed very tactfully and must 
be prepared to use other methods in certain cases, the 
demand holds good that a Decision Day must be in- 
cluded in our Sunday School work among older chil- 
dren. Its occasion and its method must be adapted to 
local needs and a knowledge of the scholars concerned, 
but a place must be found for it, and in any case 
adequate preparation is essential. Whether it be a 
day universally recognised or a “red letter day” in the 
calendar of a particular School or class, must be left 
to the discretion of the workers. The date is unim- 
portant compared with the necessity for ensuring that 
after adequate preparation every scholar shall have the 


SCHOOL AS AN EVANGELISING AGENCY 127 


great choice put before him definitely at special times 
or seasons, In some cases the time has been governed 
by the course of lessons taken in the Intermediate 
section of School, a course of studies of the Life of 
Christ being so planned that the dedication of the 
scholars’ lives to His service will be prayerfully antict- 
pated as “the expression” of the impression made by 
the lessons. 

Where an annual Decision Day is considered the 
best plan, experience proves that the permanency of © 
the results obtained is governed by the adequacy of 
the preparation made. Special lessons for a month 
are chosen to prepare for it, and members of the Church 
and Sunday School staff mobilise all their prayer forces 
for it. The co-operation of the parents is invited. 
When “the day” arrives a special service of decision 
and consecration is held—not during the afternoon, 
when the mental faculties are not at their best, nor at 
the evening service when an emotional appeal may pro- 
duce an atmosphere of excitement—but on Sunday 
morning early, or at morning School. In the fresh- 
ness of the morning hour, when all the faculties are 
alert and the youth feels braced to meet any demands 
made, the Christian life should be presented as a dar- 
ing adventure and a call to give the utmost for the 
highest, without any attempt to minimise the sacrifice 
demanded or to disguise the high ideals set up. by 
Christ for His followers. To such a challenge, pre- 
sented in such circumstances, the young adolescent will 
usually make a joyous response and can be invited to 
register the decision in black and white in “a Book 


128 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


of the Covenant” lying ready for the purpose on the 
Communion Table. A Decision Day carried out with 
set purpose and in this spirit, is likely to produce per- 
manent results, especially if it is followed by special 
classes for the training of all who have signed the 
Covenant, in the practice of the Christian life and the 
responsibilities of Christian service. An annual Cov- 
enant Service for a renewal of vows and re-dedication 
to service will not only help to keep young people 
faithful to their pledge, but will also gauge the per- 
manent success of such a plan. 

The value of the Sunday School as an evangelistic 
agency through its Primary training class must also 
be recognised. A passionate desire for service is often 
manifested in the young adolescent before he has 
grasped the necessity for a public confession of faith. 
This has resulted in whole classes of adolescent schol- 
ars volunteering for teaching work in the Primary 
Department. In some cases these offers have been 
sternly refused and such harsh terms as “unconverted 
teachers’ have been used, the result being that the 
rebuff has literally produced “unconverted adults.” 
More discerning workers have hesitated to pass judg- 
ment in such cases, with the happier result that these 
Primary helpers, under the spell of the work and 
through the agency of the Primary Training Class, 
have speedily made public confession of their faith. 
The fact of the matter is that “the Spirit bloweth 
where it listeth,’ and in many instances our older 
scholars almost unconsciously and often secretly make 
their decision for Christ and express it in the form 
of a desire to serve Him. We have to recognise that 


SCHOOL AS AN EVANGELISING AGENCY 129 


this manner of decision requires as tactful handling 
and as careful encouraging as any of the more ordi- 
nary forms of decision in public that are accepted 
without question—and which may often be more 


ephemeral. 


Cuapter VIII 


THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER 
AS EVANGELIST 


W. D. MILLER, M.A.* 


For their function as evangelists it is particularly true 
that Sunday School Teachers must ultimately train 
themselves. Here most intensely the work relates it- 
self to their personal spiritual condition and depends 
upon their own spiritual habits and discipline. The 
most perfectly organised School with the most fully 
equipped Teachers is only the scaffolding, the supremely 
necessary scaffolding, within which the spiritual temple 
is to be reared. If teachers are to understand their 
function and appreciate their privilege they must keep 
before them the true relation of the child to the 
Kingdom of God as Jesus reveals that relation in the 
Gospels. 


THE CHILD AND THE KINGDOM 


No reader of the first ten verses of the eighteenth 
chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, or of the fourteenth 
verse of the nineteenth chapter of the same Gospel, 
can fail to understand the truth Jesus declares. Ac- 


* While these pages were passing through the press news came 
of the sudden death of our contributor. For many thése last 
words of one of Glasgow’s most esteemed and successful minis- 
ters will be invested with rte peaainiaine. 

13 


SCHOOL TEACHER AS EVANGELIST 131 


cording to Jesus, every child born into this world is 
born inside the Kingdom of God, not outside the 
Kingdom—is born to salvation not to condemnation. 
That every child is also born into a state of sin and 
misery is painfully evident and true, but that fact does 
not annihilate the other fact, any more than the gross 
conditions which constitute the heritage of many a 
child born in slums and elsewhere, annihilate the 
heritage of such a child as a child of God. Jesus 
claims every child as His from the beginning and 
makes good the claim in the name of God. That 
there is “original sin” in all, sin in the nature, is a 
painful and incontestable fact, but that there is “orig- 
inal good” in all, imparted and maintained by the 
Spirit of God, is a glorious and equally incontestable 
fact. To the warfare between these two all are born, 
but the Redeeming Christ makes it plain that He gives 
a place in His Kingdom to all souls, and that it is 
there they begin their conflict with the promise of vic- 
tory, the assurance of salvation, the Presence and 
Power of their Saviour always with them. 


OBJECT OF SUNDAY SCHOOL EVANGELISM 


There is a saying of Vinet which was a favourite 
quotation of the late Principal Denney :—‘‘In preach- 
ing the object is of more importance than the subject.” 
The saying does not under-rate the subject of preach- 
ing, but it emphasises the truth that the definite object 
of it places the preacher at once in the right relation 


both to his subject and to his hearer. To make every \ 
scholar a true and real disciple of Christ is the definite 


s, 
“ 


132 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


object of Sunday School Evangelism. This involves 
equally clear and definite aims in the whole scheme of 
Spiritual Education for which the Sunday School ex- 
ists. What are some of the requisites on the part of 
teachers if they are to be successful evangelists? 


BE THE FRIEND AND WIN THE CONFIDENCE OF 
EVERY SCHOLAR 


If it be possible for any teacher to give a contribu- 
tion to the education of any scholar without getting 
into personal and intimate friendship with the scholar, 
it is not possible for the Sunday School Teacher to 
do his or her best without this. It is the supreme 
Friendship that is to be cultivated and the Sacrament 
of that is the human friendship between teacher and 
scholar. Wherever possible the teacher should know 
the homes from which the scholars come and be the 
friend of the family as well. A short time spent 
in talk with the members of the class as they assemble 
and before the School opens keeps the friendship in 
repair and it is never difficult to thus win the confidence 
of each scholar. Just in proportion as Christ is real 
to the teacher will He become real to the scholar. The 
world of youth can be made, and should be made, the 
Christ world. Among all the real figures of parents 
and friends, and among even the fairy and phantom 
figures of the wonder world of childhood, there should 
be realised the Figure of the Son of God, as Child 
and Boy and Youth and Man hallowing and transfig- 
uring the whole. To imprint this picture on the child 
imagination, to impress the whole realism of the Gos- 


SCHOOL TEACHER AS EVANGELIST 133 


pel history on the young mind, so that when with grow- 
ing intelligence the childish things of wonder and of 
fancy fade away, this in all its glory and tenderness, 
its majesty and simplicity, will only become more vivid 
—this is the function, the high and holy function of 
the Sunday School Teacher. 


AIM AT ESTABLISHING DEFINITE SPIRITUAL HABITS 


True Evangelism means change of habits, the dis- 
placement of the evil habit by the good. “The ex- , 
pulsive power of a new affection” was the great de- 
scriptive phrase of Dr. Chalmers. Sunday School 
Evangelism should mean that boys and girls are 
equipped for life with the good habit already estab- 
lished, and therefore the preventative of the evil find- 
ing a lodgment in the character. There are three defi- 
nite spiritual activities which every teacher should, 
through all the subjects of teaching, keep clearly in 
view. ‘These are Prayer, Penitence and Obedience to 
Christ. It is a complete mistake to suppose that these 
habits cannot be taught. Quite definite instructions 
can be given varying with the lesson taught but all 
converging on the one end. The teachers’ efficiency 
will depend constantly upon the practice and strength 
of these same habits and activities in their own lives. 


(a) PRAYER 


It is never difficult to teach a scholar to say a 
prayer, but saying prayers is one thing and praying 
is another. To get scholars to understand that pray- 
ing is simply “speaking to Jesus about everything” 


134 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


and then listening to what Jesus will say—is to lay 
the foundation of the habit of prayer and of true 
spiritual communion. The whole Gospels become 1il- 
lumined when a reader realises that answer and re- 
plies can be expected from Jesus now, as real and clear 
as those He gave to His disciples in Galilee or in the 
upper room. It has been a fatal blight on the Christian 
character that prayer has been regarded as largely 
offering petitions rather than holding “consultation” 
with God. Sunday School Teachers have it in their 
power to do no less than transform the spiritual habit 
of prayer in a generation. 

It can be made clear to any scholar that prayer is 
a real communion with God when it is a “speaking 
to Jesus” and there need be no confusion in the mind 
either of the teacher or of the scholar between praying 
to Jesus and praying to God. “He that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father” said Jesus, and this means also 
that “he who speaks to Me speaks to the Father and 
he who hears Me and receives an answer from me, 
hears the Father and receives an answer from Him,” 

The injunction to “pray without ceasing’ can be 
understood and obeyed when it is made clear that 
prayer means being always in touch with Jesus and 
leaving no part of daily life outside the region of 
prayer. The fatal defect in the character and practice 
of most professing Christians is that large tracts of 
life and activity are excluded from prayer, and so 
prayer often becomes largely a confession of the blun- 
ders and mistakes made there instead of a planning out 
with Christ of what is to be done and how it is to be 
done. One morning a Mother was hearing her boy say 


SCHOOL TEACHER AS EVANGELIST 135 


‘his prayer. On that day another boy, not quite a 
congenial companion, was to spend the day with him. 
When he had finished his usual prayer he added, after 
a pause, “and, Lord Jesus, help me to be decent to 
Willie to-day.” The world would be a happier place 
if more Christians prayed such prayers. If our youth 
can be taught to pray for those they do not like, or 
for those with whom they have quarrelled, they will 
“understand the meaning of the Lord’s command: ‘‘Love 
your enemies.” (Teachers should master Chapter xxi, 
of Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.) 
Nothing will so help and impress any class as united 
prayer for an absent or sick scholar, nor will anything 
so instruct and inspire every member of the class as 
the knowledge that their teacher is praying for each 
of them. 


(b) PENITENCE 


Repentance means that perpetual readjustment of 
our lives to God’s will, and the renewal of our heart’s 
response to His love, without which the Christian char- 
acter can never be made' stable, nor the Christian life 
effective in service. Matthew Henry, the commenta- 
tor, says that it is not sinning that ruins men but 
sinning and not repenting, and when we see the coarse, 
aggressive, evil-speaking type of character among our 
youth, we see the result of accumulated evil in the 
absence of repentance. That every scholar should early 
learn that spiritual action, practice and habit which 
breaks the connection between the will and the evil 
or wrong said or done, and so prevent any wicked 
or unworthy thing becoming a permanent part of the 


136 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


character, should be the distinct aim and prayer-sought 
object on the part of the teacher. 

The real difficulty of the teacher is to implant in 
the heart of each scholar the true and permanent mo- 
tive force which will always lead to repentance. Very 
early in life a child does feel the sense of wrong-doing 
and does realise that there is something amiss in its 
relation with God, and if not well guided may quickly 
drift into a state of hopeless misunderstanding when 
prayer will become quite unreal or even cease. The 
dread of punishment will never produce the right mo- 
tive of repentance. With the utmost patience the 
teacher should endeavour to instil into the mind and 
heart of the scholar the truth of the holy sacrificing 
love of Jesus as manifested in the Gospels, in His in- 
vitations, His works of kindness and healing, and 
finally in His death and rising again and coming to 
His disciples in their loneliness and sorrow and despair. 
Particularly His treatment of Peter and of Thomas 
should be emphasised in seeking to give the right feel- 
ing as to the way we treat our Lord. 

A very wise and devoted Mother once had a time 
of difficulty with her little girl who was being taught 
at home before being sent to school. The child took 
a rebellious fit and would learn no lessons. Her teacher 
and her mother tried all manner of discipline, giving 
lines to write and commit to memory, and when all 
failed even punishment was tried. One day an ar- 
rangement had been made for the child to accompany 
her mother on a very happy visit and she was to start 
when her lessons with her teacher were finished. She 
was more rebellious that day than usual, apparently 
believing that nothing could be permitted to interfere 


SCHOOL TEACHER AS EVANGELIST 137 


with her promised enjoyment, and when the hour came 
for her to go, her teacher had to report that she had 
not done her work and that she had still so many 
lines to learn and repeat. The mother decided that 
the engagement must be sacrificed and at once went 
herself to the schoolroom, took her place at the little 
daughter’s desk and said, “Now, Mother must take 
your punishment for you” and so began to learn the 
lines prescribed. She did not leave the desk until 
she had repeated all that the teacher had commanded 
should be done by the child, but before she had finished 
her child had broken down completely making the 
simple confession, “I thought you were all angry with 
me, Mother, I did not think you were so vexed with 
me.” If the children of our Sunday Schools were 
wisely taught that all the wrong they do, and all the 
evil things done in the world, are inflicting pain and 
sorrow on the heart of Christ now, as really as the 
nails driven into His hands and feet did when His 
body hung on Calvary, the true meaning of His life 
and of His death would gradually unfold to their 
minds and the true motive of repentance be lodged 
in their hearts. 


(c) OBEDIENCE, OR DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST’S 
SAKE 


To consult Christ on every step in life, to seek to 
do all things for His sake each day, is the highest ed- 
ucation and the noblest equipment our youth can ex- 
perience and it is the function of our Sunday Schools 
to send such “living epistles of Christ’’ into the world. 
In youth all things are possible and all the possibilities 
are present in their most intense form during the years 


138 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


of Sunday School life. It is also now clearly seen 
that Christianity must be seriously tried and seriously 
applied to all life if the world is not to perish. Never 
in history have the words been so completely vindi- 
cated “there is none other Name under heaven given 
among men whereby we must be saved.” To get our 
children and youth to have the holy and exhilarating 
experience of doing things for Christ’s sake, to enable 
them to acquire the fascinating interest that living for 
and with Christ gives to each day—is the work of 
the Sunday School Teacher. 

There are two elemental truths to be instilled into 
the mind in this connection. Furst, that each 1s a 
- servant of Christ and He is our Master. It is under 
this aspect that all Christ’s work for us, and all His 
relations to us, can best be explained to a young and 
healthy mind. Discipleship began in this way. An- 
drew and John literally followed Jesus along the road 
where they first met Him and so also did the first 
company of disciples. The word of Jesus which sum- 
moned Matthew and drew the others from their ordi- 
nary callings was “Follow Me.” ‘This came to mean 
following with the mind, the understanding and the 
will. Often they lagged far behind but they followed 
on to know their Lord. Simon had followed for long 
before he confessed “I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 
Every child and every youth can understand what is 
meant by taking Jesus as Master and by following 
Him. By so doing the real foundation of the Chris- 
tion character is laid and the true preparation begun 
for all the Christian experiences of conviction of sin 
through failure, and discovery of Christ as Saviour 


SCHOOL TEACHER AS EVANGELIST. 139 


and Sanctifier. The great structure of Apostolic char- 
acter and service was reared on this foundation and 
Paul calls himself ‘a servant of Jesus Christ’? in in- 
troducing himself in his letter to the Romans. It is 
also on this simple but all-embracing truth that the 
appeal to come to the Lord’s Table can be based. In 
all senior classes definite opportunity should be given 
to the scholars to learn the meaning of the sacrament, 
either by their teacher explaining this or by inviting 
them and encouraging them to attend the classes con- 
ducted by the minister for communicants. By the 
ages of 15 or 16, Sunday School scholars should wish 
to come to the Table. In youth there are certain nat- 
ural crises which occur which furnish the psychologi- 
cal moments of spiritual awakening and enlightenment 
and which may be called times of conversion; but 
every case of catastrophic conversion among our Sun- 
day School scholars raises the question of the failure 
of the home and school nurture to accomplish their 
real object. Along the line of being “servants of 
Jesus” our youth should come by process of growth 
into the experience of Salvation.* 

Second, that each has a mission in life-—The great 
blight on the young life of our time is “aimlessness.”’ ' 
‘The supreme miracle of the New Testament, the Res- 
urrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead, had as its 
consequence and vindication the moral and spiritual 
miracle of the transformation of the baffled and de- 
spairing disciples into the heralds and missionaries of 
the Cross with a mission and commission to “make 


* Teachers with great benefit might consult a little book, 
“Thoughts on Christian Sanctity,;’ by Bishop Moule. 


140 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


disciples of all nations.” There is no “election,” either 
in the Old Testament or in the New, of any soul or 
nation to merely personal or national salvation; it is 
always that “all families of the earth” be blessed. The 
great revelation of the incarnation of Jesus is that 
God needs human life in which to make Himself 
known and accomplish His purposes on earth. To 
reveal some of God’s thoughts our minds are given 
us, to translate into actual human history some part 
of His purpose and daily to be a link between heaven 
and earth God has given us the gift of life. The mind 
of youth should be cleared of the unhealthy belief that 
this world is meant by God to perish in wickedness 
and that the saved are to be rescued from the ruins. 
It is to be won for Christ, it is to be the scene and 
sphere of His Kingdom, and its end is not to be 
tragedy and failure but salvation and triumph. To 
attain this consummation all are called to be workers 
together with Christ and, as in the day schools, it is 
a definite part of the teachers’ duty to train the scholar 
for citizenship and to guide each in the choice of a 
craft or a career so it should be the Sunday School 
teachers’ concern to train scholars for citizenship in 
Christ’s Kingdom and a career in His service. Wise 
and prayerful counsel here would go far to prevent 
the leakage of the adolescent from the Church which 
has been the baffling problem for so long. 


THE TEACHER’S INSPIRATION 


That is a very wonderful saying of Jesus ‘Take 
heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for 


SCHOOL TEACHER AS EVANGELIST 141 


I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always 
behold the face of My Father which is in heaven.” 
Manifestly our Lord here uses the beliefs of the time 
about guardian angels to emphasise in the most direct 
way the truth, that all the Spiritual powers and 
agencies at His Father’s disposal gather to the help 
of every soul in its struggle, and of every soul that 
seeks to originate or direct spiritual impulses in an- 
other soul. There are heavenly teachers and workers 
interested and engaged in the work of the Sunday 
Schools and they with the great band of teachers on 
earth are workers together with God, with Christ and 
with the Holy Spirit. This should be the inspira- 
tion of all teachers and should banish all thoughts of 
defeat or despondency. 


AIDS TO TEACHERS—THE CONSECRATION SERVICE 


It has proved a very helpful experience in some 
Sunday Schools to have a Consecration Service at the 
beginning of a new session at which all teachers are 
gathered in the presence of the congregation to dedi- 
cate themselves anew to their service. In very simple 
words the aim of the Sunday School can be expressed 
and the teachers can all unite in words of consecration 
to the service of winning the children for Christ. Such 
a service reminds parents, teachers and all in the con- 
gregation of their responsibility for the youth around 
them and unites the homes with the School in the 
common service. 


142 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


FAMILY WORSHIP 


It has also been found helpful to the work of the 
teachers to get families to use the Golden Text Book 
with Daily Readings all bearing on the Sunday lesson. 
Even in homes where Family Worship has not been 
conducted it has been found possible to get the chil- 
dren who come from such homes to begin it and 
even to get their parents to join with them. They 
can read the portion of Scripture for the day together 
and then unite in the Lord’s Prayer or read the 
prayer for the day given in the Text Book. The 
children thus become evangelists in their own homes. 


CONFERENCES 


Much more use should be made of the meeting or 
bi-monthly meetings of Teachers for Conference on 
how best to win the children, and the whole question 
of Decision Day, or Days, should be thoroughly dis- 
cussed, and if decided upon carefully prepared for by 
such Conferences. It is wise to make such Decision 
Days coincide with Communion Day in those Churches 
where the Sacrament is dispensed quarterly or even 
not so frequently. It has also been found helpful for 
the Minister of the Congregation to have the Com- 
munion elements placed upon the table on the platform 
when the scholars meet, so that he may explain to 
them simply the meaning of the rite and the signifi- 
cance of each part of the service. This, however, 
should be done rarely as its impressiveness would be 
lowered by frequent repetition. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE CASE FOR EVANGELISTIC 
MEETINGS FOR CHILDREN 


D. P. THOMSON, M.A. 


THE past few years have witnessed a sharp and wide- 
spread reaction against the idea of holding evangelistic 
meetings of any kind for children, The movement 
to abolish the mass appeal altogether in favour of 
educational and environmental evangelism appears to 
be gaining ground steadily. Many of the pioneers 
of modern Sunday School methods, to whose energy 
and enthusiasm we owe so much, do not hesitate to 
express their disapproval of the Children’s Mission 
and the Children’s Missioner as means of winning 
the boys and girls of to-day for Christ. It is their 
contention that as the home and the Sunday School 
are the real nurseries of Christian character, to the 
parent and the teacher alone belong by right the privi- 
lege and responsibility of leading the children to Christ. 

The antipathy to this form of evangelistic work 
among children so noticeable in many quarters to-day 
—and so obvious in many Churches and Sunday 
Schools where up to date methods of grading and 
teaching have been introduced—is based on three 
grounds. It rests on a growing realisation of what 
is implied in the findings of a scientific Child Psychol- 


ogy, on careful observation of the fruits of successive 
143 


144 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


series of special evangelistic meetings for young people, 
and on some considerable familiarity with the type 
of men and methods generally employed. The three- 
fold argument is a weighty and impressive one, and 
a strong case can be made out against the whole idea 
of holding evangelistic meetings for children under 
any circumstances whatever. 

The psychologist has succeeded in convincing most 
workers among the young of the limitations of the 
child mind and of the extreme suggestibility of child 
nature. The child, we are told, is quite unable to 
comprehend either the subtleties of Christian doctrine 
or the implications of Christian discipleship, is in- 
capable of realising the responsibilities of the moral 
choice, and is altogether unready for anything in the 
nature of religious decision. He can be easily moved 
through his emotional nature, either to public confes- 
sion or private resolution on the matter of personal 
religion, but such decision is almost certain to be of 
the most limited duration and is more than likely to 
result in violent and dangerous reaction. ‘There is, 
further, the probability that the reality and depth of 
the spiritual life will come to be judged in future 
years by these experiences of childhood and will be 
discredited accordingly. 

Psychologists and religious educationalists who have 
pursued their investigations into the after experience 
of those affected by Children’s Missions, and have 
analysed the results of successive decades of evangelis- 
tic meetings for boys and girls, have produced an array 
of facts that call for the most serious consideration. 
It is undeniable that tens of thousands of children 


CHILDREN’S EVANGELISTIC MEETINGS 145 


in previous generations have been subject to the crud- 
est forms of appeal in the name of Evangelism, that 
feelings have been played on, and innocence and purity 
unwittingly but none the less deeply wounded, by 
those who ought to have known better, and to have 
realised what their Master meant when he spoke with 
such anger of such as offended one of His little ones. 
It is unquestionable that children have often been 
moved to tears and public confession by the recital 
of a few pathetic stories, that evangelists working 
among the young have not hesitated to measure their 
success by the hysterical condition induced in the meet- 
ing, and that all the terrors of hell have been used to 
shock sensitive young lives to what was called re- 
pentance. 

These facts make painful reading, but it is well 
that we should face them. More painful still have 
been the after-effects in such cases. The numbers of 
the so-called “converts” of such meetings who have 
been for ever repelled from evangelical Christianity can 
scarcely be estimated, and of the remainder it is hardly 
too much to say that the greater proportion have either 
settled down to the dead level of a nominal Christianity 
or have arrived at the sceptical conviction that there 
is nothing whatever of value in religious experience— 
that it consists simply of the enthusiasm, aspiration and 
imagination we put into it. 

It is hardly to be wondered at that ministers, teachers 
and educationalists—with these facts in mind—have 
come to the conclusion that evangelistic meetings for 
children are to be avoided even at the cost of lost 
opportunities. The risks are so great, and the results 


146 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


in many cases so disastrous, as to create the reluctant 
conviction that any deep and lasting success attained 
is too dearly bought at the price. Some knowledge of 
the type of men frequently engaging in this form 
of work at the present time, and of the methods they 
tend to adopt, only serves to strengthen their con- 
viction and to confirm them in their hostility to this 
particular line of work. 

It may well be asked, in view of the arguments that 
have been advanced, and the facts that have been 
adduced to support them, whether any reasonable plea 
can be made for evangelistic meetings for children 
under any circumstances whatever, or any substantial 
case built up in their favour. The writer would un- 
hesitatingly answer that question in the affirmative. 
It is his growing conviction that there is a very real 
place for such meetings, and that the religious edu- 
cationalist who fails to recognise this is doing less than 
justice to all the facts of the situation. The question 
of the methods to be adopted, and the type of men 
and women best fitted for the work can safely be left 
till later. 

Here we are primarily concerned with the justi- 
fication of the evangelistic meeting as a method of 
approach to the boys and girls of to-day on behalf 
of a Church anxious to recruit young life for her 
Lord and Master. 

(1) The evangelistic meeting for children is the only 
effective means of reaching large classes of boys and 
¥ girls in our industrial and urban communities—to say 
nothing of many outlying country districts in all parts 
of the land. There are tens of thousands of children 


CHILDREN’S EVANGELISTIC MEETINGS 147 


in the great centres of population whose environment 
is altogether unfavourable to the normal growth of 
Christian character, and whose parents manifest not the 
least concern in their moral and spiritual welfare. A 
considerable number of them are accessible to the 
Sunday School, the Band of Hope and kindred or- 
ganisations, and not a few are being reached and won 
by the splendid educational evangelism for which the 
modern grading system at its best is responsible, but 
for a large proportion of these children the Sunday 
School possesses no attraction. Their parents are un- 
willing to co-operate with the teachers in securing 
their regular attendance. The children themselves find 
the School at once too dignified and too dull. Run 
on really attractive lines, the evangelistic mission for 
children stands a very good chance of gaining their 
interest, and may very well succeed in providing the 
means by which the gulf which separates them from 
Sunday School and Church will ultimately be bridged. 
The lively choruses, enthusiastic and even crowded 
meetings, lantern lectures or chalk talks, almost insep- 
arable from such gatherings, make a much more effec- 
tive appeal to the slum child—an habitué, even at a 
tender age, of the Cinema and the Music Hall—than 
does the Sunday School with its great regularity, 
decorum and discipline. Given a Missioner of the 
right kind, using methods at once sane, healthy and 
psychologically sound, these children may be brought 
under permanent impression and kindly Christian in- 
fluence, and led, by gradual stages, through the Sunday | 
School and into the Church. Above all, they can’ 
really be won for Christ. 


148 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


The slum child is not the only one more readily 
accessible to this type of evangelistic approach than 
to any other. The child at the very opposite end of 
the social scale is often in a strangely analogous posi- 
tion. There are thousands of wealthy parents who 
would not dream of allowing their children to attend 
a Sunday School, and who make no provision what- 
ever for the spiritual needs of their boys and girls. 
The children of such parents are left to grow up in 
complete ignorance of what Christianity can mean in 
personal experience, and are in danger of going out 
into the larger world of adolescence and adult life 
dominated by purely materialistic conceptions, and 
robbed of just that ideal and dynamic which they need 
- most, and which Jesus Christ, alone can supply. The 
experiences of the Children’s Special Service Mission, 
alike in the preparatory and public schools and at the 
holiday resorts, has abundantly demonstrated the pos- 
sibility of reaching and winning children of just this 
class by means of Sand Services and special types 
of evangelistic meetings. What the C.S.S.M. has 
done, others have done and are doing, all over the 
country. 

Intermediate between the two classes mentioned, it 
is not unreasonable to suppose that there is a large 
proportion of the children of the middle-classes de- 
prived of definitely Christian influences in the home, 
and not readily accessible to the Sunday School, which 
can be reached along similar lines. Is all this great 
army of young life, it must be asked, to be left ex- 
posed to the attacks of the enemy unprotected and un- 
equipped? Is it to be left at the mercy of all those 


CHILDREN’S EVANGELISTIC MEETINGS 149 


influences that operate so powerfully in an unchristian 
environment? Surely not! 

(2) The evangelistic meeting for children is the 
one generally effective means of bringing mto per- 
sonal relationship with Jesus Christ hundreds of boys 
and girls in our congregations and Sunday Schools, 
whose teachers—either through lack of traning, or 
through want of personal spiritual experience—neg- 
lect the opportunities afforded them of winning their 
scholars for Christ. 

It has been urged, not unreasonably, that many 
Sunday School teachers lead their scholars up to a 
certain point but no further. The children, year after 
year, are getting instruction but remain outside the 
Kingdom; they come regularly to school but do not 
come to Christ; they learn to love their teacher, but 
they do not learn to love the Saviour. If they remain 
in School they may join some senior class, and under 
an earnest teacher be led into the Church, but will they 
remain? The vast majority do not. At 14, when they 
go to work, they consider themselves too big for the 
Sunday School, and they begin to “drift away.” It 
is here, in town and country alike, but perhaps more 
especially in the country districts, that “Children’s 
Missions” find a place, and succeed in meeting a very 
real need. 

(3) The evangelistic meeting for children is the 
most effective means of reaching and winning certain | 
types of young people in all our Churches and Sunday 
Schools. There are boys and girls in every congrega- 
tion and school who are much more accessible to the 
Missioner than to their own parents or teachers, and 


150 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


much more susceptible to the appeal of the mission 
meeting than to the environmental influences of home 
and Sunday School. Because of some peculiarity of 
temperament, or by reason of some psychologically de- 
termining experience in early years with its resultant 
“complex,” they will open their hearts much more read- 
ily to a stranger than to one whom they know well, 
and in not a few cases, will avail themselves of the 
opportunity afforded by a season of special meetings 
for making what proves to be a genuine and lasting 
decision for Christ. Again and again in the course 
of his own work the writer has experienced this, and 
others similarly engaged in widely different fields cor- 
roborate his testimony. 

These three lines of argument combine to produce 
a very strong case in favour of evangelistic meetings 
for children under certain circumstances and in certain 
places, but there is another line of evidence which 
ought not to be overlooked, its definitely psychological 
significance making it the more impressive. If during 
a special evangelistic effort in a congregation or a 
community, no meetings for children are held, and no 
opportunity is given for their being personally dealt 
with on spiritual things in some one or other of the 
meetings, then the unfortunate impression will be cre- 
ated in many young minds that the love and grace 
and power of Jesus Christ are not for them, and that 
they must wait until they are older before they can- 
become Christians. Many a sensitive child has wept 
sorely and suffered excruciating agony at the thought 
of being left outside when others were getting the 
blessing. 


CHILDREN’S EVANGELISTIC MEETINGS 151 


Lest it should be thought that such cases represent 
abnormal—or even distinctly pathological—types it 
may be well to adduce the testimony of one of the 
most authoritative religious psychologists of the pres- 
ent day—Dr. J. Bisset Pratt. In his recently pub- 
lished book, The Religious Consciousness, Dr. Pratt 
has a deeply interesting chapter on “The Religion 
of Childhood.” “Children,” he says, “are often very 
unhappy; in fact a sensitive child may be as utterly 
wretched half a dozen times in one day as his father 
is in the course of a year. . . . Nor are children, say 
from eight to fourteen, by any means so innocent as 
we like to think them. Many of them consciously 
break more moral laws than they ever will in mature 
life. And accompanying these actions, often goes a 
sense of sin, and an inward tumult which we never 
guess because they are deliberately hidden from all us 
outsiders,” * . 

The effect on the minds of such children of the 
impression—however unwittingly conveyed—that they 
are too young to be the subjects of the redeeming grace 
and power of Christ can more readily be imagined 
than described. 

Almost more serious are cases of the type to which 
Mr. Tiplady refers in his Social Christianity in the 
New Era. In one of the chapters of that book he 
tells of how a boy of ten, anxious to dedicate his young 
life to the service of Christ, and waiting behind after 
a meeting for the purpose of being spoken to, was 
passed over by workers whose sole concern seemed 
to be with the reclamation of drunkards and hardened 


* The Religious Consciousness, by J. Bisset Pratt. 


152 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


sinners. Brooding on the incident in the months that 
followed, and weighing it in the light of the preach- 
ing under which he sat, that boy came to the terrible 
conclusion that before he could become a Christian he 
must first become a prodigal and go out into “the 
far country.” Then, after a riotous and ungodly life, 
he would have something of which to repent, and for 
which to seek with penitence the Divine forgiveness, 
and then, at last, the Church would welcome him back 
with open arms. Appeals to him to give his voung 
life to Christ in the freshness of youth, to which 
he listened from time to time on Children’s Sunday, 
left him with a feeling of unreality. “One felt,” he 
wrote long afterwards, “that the teachers just wanted 
to keep us safe until we come to years of under- 
standing. . . . The child’s acceptance of religion was, 
it seemed, but the false dawn, the real dawn could 
not come until one reached the teens.” 

The very human document from which these words 
are quoted—and it is selected from a mass of similar 
evidence—serves to show what impression is made 
on the child’s mind, and what the consequences of 
that impression may be, if he gets the idea that vital 
Christian experience cannot be entered on before ado- 
lescence. It suggests what may very well happen if 
no provision is made for effective work among chil- 
dren during special evangelistic meetings. 

Finally, we may sum up the case for evangelistic 
meetings for children by citing the mature conviction 
of one whose Presbyterian upbringing and environ- 
ment and typical Scottish caution—whose long experi- 
ence in the ministry, and painstaking psychological 


CHILDREN’S EVANGELISTIC MEETINGS 153 


study—give him some title to be heard. In his re- 
cently published book, “The Psychology of Christian 
Life and Behaviour,’ Dr. W. S. Bruce of Banff, the 
well-known Scotch theologian and ecclesiastical leader, 
puts some searching questions on the validity of this 
form of religious enterprise. “Should Gospel Missions 
to the children be encouraged?” he asks. ‘‘Practically 
are they desirable? Religiously are they beneficial? / 
Psychologically are they justifiable?’’/ And this is his > 
considered verdict :—“Putting the last question first 
we have no hesitation in giving an affirmative answer. 

_ Psychology commends them. It justifies their object, 
while it conditions their methods and limits their 
range. The answer to the first two questions is to 
be found in the right consideration of these limiting 
conditions.” Dr. Bruce then goes on to describe the 
ideal Children’s Missioner, and to give some of his 
own experiences of the work. This method of work 
in seeking to win the children for Christ his balanced 
judgment leads him warmly to commend, and of the 
significance and value of such a testimony there can 
hardly be two opinions. 

What has been said in these pages is not to be taken 
as in any way justifying all types of evangelistic meet- 
ings for children, or even as an endorsement of that 
particular method of approach as the best in every 
or any place. Everything depends on the local cir- 
cumstances, and on the way in which such meetings 
are planned and conducted. There are types of evan- 
gelistic missions to the young to which no educated 
Christian man can fail to take exception. There are 
methods employed, and lines of approach adopted— 


wv 


154 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


even by men who profess to be specialists in this 
department—which in no way commend themselves to 
our judgment. 

In Chapter X Mr. Burgess deals with the Special 
Mission to Children, and in the succeeding chapter I 
have made some attempt to indicate the lines on which 
evangelistic meetings for children should be conducted. 


CHAPTER X 
SPECIAL MISSION FOR CHILDREN 
A. W. BURGESS 


In these days of cost accountancy, business efficiency 
and keen competition, every industrial department is 
subjected to analysis and is expected to pay. It is 
true, however, that some departments are more profit- 
able than others. If this form of cost analysis and 
comparative results is extended to Christian service, 
it will be found that work among the young is more 
fruitful than any other. In the Sunday School move- 
ment, it is possible to influence those who before long 
will cast their spell upon others, and the child has 
before him the possibility of consecrating his whole 
life to the highest of all services. 

There is to-day a movement to put the child in his 
rightful position in Church and State, and modern 
religious thought in placing the emphasis upon the 
child is only following the Master’s injunction to 
“Feed my Lambs.” 

The apathy in so many homes regarding spiritual 
matters, as well as the absence of family life in certain 
sections, make the Sunday School a far greater in- 
stitution than it has ever been, and the Sunday School 
teacher has a calling which is an heroic enterprise of 


faith and courage. 
155 


156 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


THE TEACHERS LEAGUE OF SUPPORTERS 


Many means are capable of employment in the great 
task of winning the young life for the Master, and 
Adam Smith’s theory of the Division of Labour has 
its effect on the many contributory causes which have 
Decision or Conversion as their result. No wise 
teacher or organiser will overlook the causes which 
have fitted him or her for the holy task, or will neglect 
the other outside influences at work. 

It has become common in some parts for foot- 
ballers to form a Supporters’ Club, and the latter, as 
its name implies, has as its two-fold object the attend- 
ance at all matches and the encouragement which 
comes from the lusty shout. In the same way, the 
sprinter knows what it means to hear the applause 
as he passes a competitor in the race. No Sunday 
School teacher would desire to work alone, and while 
reward has no place in our economy, a supporters’ 
league is a great asset. The co-operation of parents 
is helpful, and the teacher’s visits to the home are a 
part of Christian service, perhaps as vital as direct 
class-teaching. Modern school methods and equip- 
ment are working on behalf of the teacher, and the 
week-night meetings assist in attaching the young mind 
to School and Church. The minister’s Sunday talks to 
the children are for the sole purpose of winning them, 
and behind him and the teacher stands the influence 
of public and private prayer. All these strengthen the 
hands of the teacher, and the Special Mission for 
children must be considered from the same standpoint. 


SPECIAL MISSION FOR CHILDREN 157 


NO TABULATION NECESSARY 


The tabulation of the results of Special Missions 
is to be deprecated, because complete results of any 
form of spiritual seed sowing and reaping are im- 
possible. At the same time, evidence exists in the 
records of the National Sunday School Union and 
elsewhere to show that these Missions are well worth 
while. Workers at home and abroad who received 
their soul awakening at Special Services testify to the 
accuracy of this statement. It can be recalled that 
frequently one hears the statement “converted at the 
Mission conducted by So & So,” while an atmosphere 
entirely its own is created in the minds of many by a 
reference to such services. 


THE OBJECTS OF A SPECIAL MISSION : 


A Special Mission will aim at focussing attention 
on the need for the acceptance of Christ as Saviour; 
it will proceed on the basis of the desirability of the 
definiteness of conversion, but it will also promote a 
spirit of expectancy and prayer, and can be judged 
as ineffectual if the Church and School are not up- 
lifted at its close. Apart, therefore, from the imme- 
diate results on the scholars, the teacher should find 
at its termination an atmosphere exactly adjusted to 
the requirements of a teacher’s calling. 


ESSENTIAL PREREQUISITES 


A business is not made in a day; a sermon is not 
solely the work of hours, and a Special Mission needs 


158 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


as careful preparation as the one, and the contribu- 
tion of as much personality as the other. The mes- 
sage and method of the Special Missioner are useless 
without prayer and preparation. The work begins, 
continues, and ends in prayer, but preparation must 
go hand in hand with it. 

We get out of our Christian Service, out of business, 
out of life, just what we put into it, and this applies 
equally to the Special Mission. There is great ad- 
vantage to be derived often from the new voice, and 
there is often equal gain arising from the new method. 
The advertisement hoarding, the form of invitation 
adjusted to the needs of those it seeks to interest, 
the very titles of the Missioner’s addresses, the crea- 
tion and maintenance of active interest of Minister, 
Church Officers, Congregation, and School are the 
alphabet of successful preparation. If it is worth doing 
it is worth doing well, and if it is organised thought- 
fully in prayer, there is no need to doubt the result. 
Not only will a Special Mission assist the Minister 
and teacher in their normal duties, it will bring in 
boys and girls, many of whom attend no Sunday 
School; boys and girls in as great a need as those 
Raikes found and harboured. Properly handled, the 
Special Mission is a dynamic, and the Church and 
School rising to its joint responsibility will seek to 
meet the new needs of those clamouring for spiritual 
food. It will be seen that nothing should be permitted 
to interfere with the series of meetings, and that care- 
ful consultation as to details is essential before they 
begin. 


SPECIAL MISSION FOR CHILDREN 159 


THE SPECIAL MISSIONER 


The Special Missioner is necessarily a specialist; 
he knows his Master, he understands the child and 
usually the adult, and he possesses the grace of attract- 
ing both. He will forbid anything in the nature of 
sensationalism; he will adopt sane methods, and will 
leave young and old the opportunity to make the all- 
important decision without the least suggestion of com- 
pulsion or pressure. He will know that team play 
is a characteristic of Christian service, and he will 
consider himself as one who co-operates with Minister, 
teacher and parent. The teacher will watch his ways, 
and will learn something of the difficult art of Per- 
sonal Evangelism. 


A SUCCESSFUL PLAN 


In a normal Special Mission, it is very desirable 
to begin on a Saturday and to close on the following 
Tuesday week. The value of two Sundays in which 
to get at home with the Adults will be appreciated, 
and usually the second Sunday is a time of rich 
harvest. 

The first Saturday is a “Welcome” night, at which 
Missioner and workers join hands in prayer, and it 
should be a time of personal searching of heart. 
Every worker should be able to work enthusiastically 
as a result of the previous prayer meetings and the 
“Welcome” Meeting, and on this basis alone is co- 
operation possible. It will be arranged of course to 
give the Special Missioner one clear day’s rest during 


160 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


the week. Throughout the whole time he will need 
the prayers of those associated with him, and it will 
encourage him to see teachers and scholars together 
at the meetings. 

A Special Missioner needs to be able to deal with 
adults as well as the boys and girls, and in this case 
two meetings each evening are possible, one, say, at 
6.30 p.m. for juniors, and the other at 8 p.m. for 
adults. The Missioner may hold a ‘““Museum Service” 
at which objects mentioned in the Bible are exhibited, 
and the teacher will be surprised at the interest and 
art manifested by the youngsters in securing the ex- 
hibits. He will doubtless arrange for afternoon Bible 
Readings, and for evening Lantern Lectures. 

It is usual to restrict the age of the Juniors so 
that only those of eight and upwards are invited, but 
great emphasis can be laid upon the adolescents, for 
whom such meetings as Football Services are possible. 
In Canada and the United States, the young people 
are invited to Banquets and Suppers, and the methods 
are almost limitless. 

On the two Sundays, the Special Missioner should 
share or occupy the pulpit, and in the afternoon he 
will be available for the Sunday School. 


CONTINUATION EDUCATION 


Stress has been made within recent years of the 
need for education after school. A Mission does not 
end when the doors are shut at its close. The Chris- 
tian Life is a progressive experience—it is a journey 
and not a rest on a mile-stone. The young converts 


SPECIAL MISSION FOR CHILDREN 161 


will require training and guidance. They are just 
recruits, but the wearing of a uniform is not sufficient 
in the Army or in the King’s Service. The Church 
and School will be well advised therefore, before the 
Mission is held, to decide as to the form of the “‘After- 
care” work, and in this extension no one will be more 
pleased to assist than the Minister himself. 


SPECIAL OPEN AIR MISSIONS 


_ There is a particular form of the Special Mission to 
which reference should be made, and if it differs in 
method from that already described, it will be appar- 
ent that its aim is the same. 

The holiday months present a great opportunity to 
win the boys and girls for Jesus Christ. The Na- 
tional Sunday School Union, the Children’s Special 
Service Mission, and other organisations and individ- 
uals conduct services at the seaside, and their common 
object is that of witness and decision. The Sand 
Services conducted by the former body here described, 
are doubtless indicative of the work carried on gen- 
erally by other organisations. 


THE KENT COAST SAND SERVICES 


The N.S.S.U. Evangelist, Rev. Newton Jones, com- 
menced these services thirty-four years ago at Mar- 
gate, and services are now held under the N.S.S.U. 
banner every August at Margate, Ramsgate, Broad- 
stairs, Tankerton, Birchington and Herne Bay. 

The general plan is to arrange for a short swim 


162 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


in the early morning for those youngsters who care 
for it, to hold an hour’s Gospel service from II a.m. 
to I2 noon, and to spend the afternoons in rambles, 
games, picnics, and studies. While the work is essen- 
tially for the boys and girls, adults are not overlooked, 
and special arrangements are made for Sunday School 
workers, 

Each centre has a leader and an assistant, is pro- 
vided with a tent or bungalow, a piano or harmonium, 
medals for prizes, hymn sheets and sports outfit. The 
spiritual results have always been satisfactory, and a 
review of hundreds of letters from adolescents has 
revealed the power of this form of Christian service. 
The games and rambles are adjuncts so arranged as 
to give the workers opportunities to talk personally 
with the young people about the “Great Adventure.” 

It has been possible at each centre to secure the 
services of volunteers to assist the leaders, and the 
whole work is planned to the smallest detail months 
ahead by the Superintendent. 

The Sports side is organised as a separate depart- 
ment on account of the size of the work, and one 
minister superintends all the heats and finals. A chal- 
lenge trophy is presented to the winning team as well 
as individual medals. 

The leaders exchange “pulpits,” and a few “free 
lances” assist at the various centres. Special picnics 
at which addresses to Christian workers are given are 
arranged each week, and for this purpose the six 
centres meet at two separate places. ‘This work is also 
organised as a separate department, and is in the hands 
of a minister. 


SPECIAL MISSION FOR CHILDREN 163 


Arrangements are being made this year for a choral 
competition, and it may be that this will constitute a 
similar separate organisation. 

The Gospel Services are varied, and include Sand 

Text Competitions, Museum Services, Harvest Fes- 
tivals, Temperance Lectures, and it is not difficult to 
attract large crowds. The boys and girls are regis- 
tered, and punctual and regular attendance rewarded. 
Parents in general do not object to their children at- 
tending the services, and many children have been the 
means of bringing their parents. 
_ The appeal thus made to the modern boy and girl 
is almost irresistible, and one finds an enthusiasm at 
all the centres sufficient to testify to the appreciation 
of the work. 


SAND SERVICE EXTENSION 


It has been possible to train ministerial students for 
the Sand Services, and as a result help has been given 
to local Sunday School Unions who desired to en- 
gage in this class of work. After all, the personality 
and equipment of the leader for this and any form 
of outdoor Christian service is of vital importance. 

At Swansea, very successful services have been or- 
ganised on the above lines, and the finances have been 
met. Local friends at Southport have carried on work 
inaugurated there by the Superintendent of the Kent 
Coast Sand Services. 


164 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


SAND SERVICE FINANCE 


The National Union has been able to free the serv- 
ices of its Evangelist in the summer for Sand Service 
work, and the cost of central administration apart 
from this is practically mil. Each leader and assistant 
receives a small honorarium and travelling expenses, 
and apart from this item there is no great expense. 
The Superintendent is able to secure donations which 
normally cover the expenses. Each centre incurs small 
expenses and secures contributions, but collections are 
usually forbidden by the authorities, and, so far, no 
centre on the Kent Coast can be regarded as self- 
supporting. 

The cost, however, is not heavy, and it is not essen- 
tial to organise everything on the Kent Coast lines. 
As an attractive form of Special Missions for children 
there is very much to be said for the Sand Services, 
and there should be an extension of the movement as 
soon as this fact is appreciated. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S 
MEETINGS | 


D. P. THOMSON, M.A. 


IN a previous chapter the conviction was expressed 
that the vindication or condemnation of the evangelistic 
meeting for children as a method of approach to young 
life on the part of the Church was more a matter of 
men and methods than of anything else. The writer“ 
wishes to emphasise that point. It cannot be too 
strongly urged that the Missitoner who succeeds in 
commending himself and his work to the ministers and 
teachers with whom he co-operates in winning the 
young life of the country for Christ, is worthy of of- 
ficial recognition and of a definite place in our Chris- 
tian educational programme. Guided by wise hands, 
and conducted on sane lines, meetings such as we are 
discussing may be productive of untold good, and will 
certainly result in blessing out of all proportion to the 
thought and energy expended. Led by the type of man 
whose line of approach and method of appeal are alike 
psychologically unsound and spiritually valueless, they 
are almost certain to result in greater damage to grow- 
ing minds and hearts than can easily be realised. Hu- 
manly speaking everything depends on the Missioner. 


In his suggestive book on Religious Psychology, to 
165 


166 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


which reference has already been made,* Dr. Bruce 
discusses the qualifications of the ideal Children’s 
Evangelist. “He must be a man specially endowed and 
fitted for the work. Such endowments are rare in- 
deed. It needs a mind that delights in the pictorial; an 
imagination that can seize the children’s standpoint, can 
construe the world to the childish view, can view all 
truth with the young eye, and see its bearings on young 
life, on play, on lessons, on companions and parents, on 
brothers and sisters. Few have got this wondrous 
faculty. But the man or woman that has it is the in- 
valuable missioner to children. Further, illustrations 
must be sought and found in all sides of child life. 
The Missioner must excel in the number of side-lights 
which he can throw upon the great truth which he eluci- 
dates. He must be apt in telling stories, and they must 
be such as children thoroughly understand, and such 
as do not sidetrack the truth.” 

This is not by any means a complete picture, and, as 
Dr. Bruce remarks, here as elsewhere, the ideal is all 
too rarely found. What then, we must ask, are the in- 
dispensable qualifications for one who would undertake 
this work? 

The children’s evangelist must needs be a man (or 
woman) of winning personality, with something of that 
fine combination of strength and tenderness for which 
the young people of both sexes will insensibly look. A 
well-developed imaginative faculty must be supple- 
mented by sufficient critical and constructive powers to 


* The Psychology of Christian Life and Behaviour, by W. S. 
Bruce, D.D. 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 167 


ensure the salient facts of Child Psychology being ade- 
quately handled and related to the needs of the work. 
The Missioner must know the child-mind, with its 
limited horizons and undeveloped powers, its innate 
fondness for the pictorial and the concrete, and its com- 
plete inability to appreciate the abstract; the child heart 
with its wonderful capacity for loyalty and affection, 
for high resolve and generous self-sacrifice; the child- 
soul, so singularly sensitive to the promptings of the 
unseen, so filled with vague aspirations and longings, 
and visited so often by strange disquiets. He must 
shave not merely a very real background of personal 
spiritual experience, but some grounding in practical 
work among both boys and girls both inside and outside 
the walls of the Sunday School and the Church. 
Above all, there must be that humble dependence on the 
Holy Spirit, without which no vital work for the King- 
dom of God can be done. 

Next in importance to the personality of the speaker, 
are the methods adopted in the conduct of the meetings, 
and the form in which the message is delivered to the 
children. There are many different types of meetings 
embraced within the scope of our discussion, and it will 
perhaps be well to begin with a consideration of the 
Special Mission, or series of meetings, so ably intro- 
duced by Mr. Burgess in the previous chapter. The 
suggestions advanced in this connection will prove more 
generally applicable than such limitation of our subject 
would seem to suggest, and the questions presenting 
themselves for answer will raise implications involving 
the whole field of evangelistic work among children. 


168 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


What holds good of the meeting that forms one of a 
series, will be found to hold good in many points of 
the single meeting as well. 

The first question that presents itself in connection 
with the planning of an evangelistic campaign concerns 
the nature and extent of the constituency to which the 
appeal is to be addressed. That question comes with 
_ peculiar force in the case of a Young People’s Mission. 
Are the meetings to be strictly confined to children, or 
should they be thrown open to all? Is the Missioner 
to aim at a specialised audience consisting entirely of 
young people under 14 or 15, or at a family gathering 
to which fathers and mothers will come accompanied by 
their children? Difference of opinion exists on this 
point, and probably there is room for it. There is much 
to be said on both sides. The open meeting with its 
appeal specially addressed to children gives the Mis- 
sioner a unique opportunity of getting the ear and gain- 
ing the interest of men and women who would not read- 
ily attend any other kind of evangelistic meeting. 
Parents come with their children, the importunity of 
the boys and girls who have been gripped on the open- 
ing nights of the Mission being such that mothers, and 
even fathers, find it difficult to resist their appeal. On 
the other hand, where the meeting is confined to chil- 
dren, (except for the monitors or workers whose 
presence may be considered necessary for the purpose 
of keeping order,) the speaker has it in his power to 
specialise the message in a way that it is not easy to 
do otherwise. Experience has shown that the latter 
type of meeting is much more difficult to handle, 
especially when the numbers are large, and the Young 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 169 


People’s Evangelists of the Scottish Churches, with 
whose work the writer is familiar, have generally 
adopted the other method. Doubtless they feel not 
only that the opportunity of reaching the parents is too 
good to be lost, but that their very presence in the 
meetings makes for increased interest and impressive- 
ness so far as the children are concerned. While practi- 
cally and experimentally this type of meeting may have 
much to commend it in the eyes of many, from the all- 
important point of view of adaptation of the message to 
the child-mind Graded Evangelism is undoubtedly the 
ideal. 

With graded methods in the Sunday School most 
of us are now familiar, and the Primary, Junior and 
Intermediate Departments at least, are prominent fea- 
tures of our religious educational system. If the 
premises on which such division rests are sound, then, 
as a logical development from this, some form of grad- 
ing in Evangelistic work must inevitably follow. In 
‘America, perhaps more than in our own country, the 
principle of adaptation has already come to be observed 
in some quarters as applicable to young people’s evan- 
gelism, particularly through the medium of the Sun- 
day School. ‘We assume,” says Mr. Frank L. Brown, 
in a recent book on this subject,* “that the character 
of the appeal for the Christian decision of the scholars 
should be graded. Different motives, experience and 
knowledge are found at each stage of development, and 
these must be taken into account if we do not wish to 
develop some cases of stunted growth or arrested 
development’’—and, we might add, if we wish to 


* Plans for Sunday School Evangelism, by Frank L. Brown. 


170 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


avoid that bane of all young people’s work, spiritual 
precocity! It is surely unreasonable to expect the 
same evangelistic address and appeal to do justice to the 
child of 6 or 8 and the boy or girl bordering on the 
teens. “Each age,’ we need to be reminded, “has its 
own characteristics spiritually as well as intellectually, 
and what is good and necessary for one period of de- 
velopment may be positively harmful for another.” 
These considerations must guide us in all our work. 

But, it may be asked, granting its desirability, is 
Graded Evangelism practicable? And the answer is, 
that it depends altogether on the amount of trouble we 
are willing to take, and the amount of time we are 
prepared to spend in making the necessary arrange- 
ments. The writer has experitnented with the graded 
method in adolescent evangelism, and has followed with 
interest the experiments that others have been making 
in the same field. In the future he hopes to test the 
principle more thoroughly, but enough information has 
already been gathered abundantly to demonstrate not 
only the practicability but the wisdom of this method. 
What has been—and is being—done successfully among 
adolescents, could be carried out even more effectively 
among children, the difference between the early and 
later stages of adolescence being hardly as great as 
between the Primary and Intermediate child. 

When the preliminary problem of the range of 
appeal to be aimed at and the type of meeting to be 
adopted has been solved, the children’s evangelist. dis- 
covers his next task to be that of finding an effective 
point of contact with his youthful constituency. The 
probability is that he will decide to use either the lan- 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 171 


tern or the blackboard as a means of attracting atten- 
tion and gaining interest, and if his Chalk Talks, Song 
Services, or Lantern Addresses have been well inti- 
mated and advertised beforehand he may reasonably 
expect to find a considerable audience gathered on the 
opening night. If his Mission begins on a Sunday he 
will have the opportunity of addressing the forenoon 
congregation and of speaking to the Sunday School 
later in the day. So far as the children of the congre- 
gation are concerned, everything will depend on the 
kind of impression he makes there. But there remain 
the children who are to be found neither in Church nor 
in Sunday School, and for whom minister and missioner 
alike must feel no little concern. How are they to be 
reached? Judiciously worded advertisements and at- 
tractively drawn-up cards of invitation may do much, 
but a personal visit to the Day School will do far more. 
It will provide the missioner with an opportunity of 
impressing his personality and message on those very 
children who are most difficult to reach, and it may very 
well win for him the sympathy of the teachers. Per- 
mission to pay such a visit is generally readily granted 
to an accredited worker, the Bible Hour being placed at 
his disposal on one or more days. The writer has had 
the experience of being invited to use that hour morn- 
ing by morning during his stay in a town, and has 
found it an invaluable opening. The outcome of such 
a visit will very largely depend on the missioner’s per- 
sonality and gifts, and on his power of attracting and 
interesting the children. 

In his Summer Caravan Work among the villages, 
Mr. Pratt, the artist evangelist of the United Free 


172 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


Church of Scotland, makes a habit of visiting the 
local school as early as possible during a Mission. 
- Armed with a fresh canvas and his brush and colours, 
he finds his way to the school-room on the Tuesday 
or Wednesday morning and entertains the fascinated 
children for the best part of an hour with a homely talk 
or story, illustrated by a painting done before their 
wondering and admiring eyes. Only an artist of Mr. 
Pratt’s gifts could do this with success, but in his hands 
it becomes a most effective and telling method of 
approach and appeal, and long before the hour is over 
the studied indifference or thinly veiled antagonism of 
many a teacher is broken down, resulting in a pressing 
invitation to return the following day, and perhaps in 
a visit to the caravan, or a heart to heart talk in the 
quiet of the school-room parlour on the biggest things 
of life. What Mr. Pratt accomplishes in his own 
unique way, others may succeed in effecting by means 
of a blackboard talk or an object lesson address, or even 
in the case of those not so gifted, by the medium of 
speech alone. 

The lantern and the blackboard are very largely used 
in evangelistic meetings for children, some workers 
preferring the one and some the other. The black- 
board demands special gifts, and even if the speaker be 
an adept at the work it should be prepared beforehand. 
The curiosity of the children is roused by the presence 
of the draped or paper covered board, and their interest 
is secured from the start. Bit by bit, as the address 
proceeds, the coverings are removed ‘until the whole 
series of pictures stands revealed with its dual appeal 
to eye and ear. As an alternative to the blackboard 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 173 


the lantern may be used, but the pictures must be good 
ones and the interest must be sustained by a sufficiently 
large series of slides. Some children’s evangelists lec- 
ture through “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and ‘The Last 
Week of Christ’s Life,’ in the course of a Mission, 
and the latter especially can be done with great power 
and effect. The Pilgrim may create more amusement, 
but the presentation of the suffering Saviour will appeal 
to all that is deepest in the mind and heart of the child, 
and in the hands of one who is careful not to harrow the 
feelings of the little ones either by his manner or 
message, or by the pictures he shows, such a series may 
accomplish much. 

There are speakers to children who essay the work 
of a week or fortnight’s indoor meetings without the 
aid of either the screen or the blackboard, but for the 
average man the wisdom of such a course is distinctly 
doubtful. Even with the use of object lessons and con- 
crete illustrations of one kind or another, or with the 
exercise of a highly developed imaginative and descrip- 
tive faculty in the telling of stories, it is difficult to hold 
large audiences of young people night by night, espe- 
cially in the more populous centres where counter at- 
tractions are so many. 

Music will have a large place in the programme 
of children’s meetings, and the evangelist will do well 
to choose his hymns with care. Hymns of inner ex- 
perience and yearning that belong to a much later stage 
in life, or of pious aspiration for the rest and seclusion 
of heaven, will be studiously avoided, and hymns with 
a strong doctrinal background may well be omitted 
from the selection. Most of our modern collections in- 


174 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


clude a sufficient number of active, virile, picturesque 
hymns, eminently suited to the eager and restless spirit 
of youth, to afford abundant variety of choice. If 
hymn sheets are used—and they have their place—a 
judiciously graded selection can be made, but on the 
whole there is much to be said for the use of a large 
roll prominently displayed on the blackboard, the words 
being printed in type sufficiently large for all to see. In 
the case of a lantern service the screen will, of course, 
be employed. This method lends variety and interest 
to the meetings, and helps to concentrate the attention 
of the children on the speaker. If solos are rendered 
they should be wisely chosen and should always have 
a chorus in which the children can join. The Mission 
affords a splendid opportunity for teaching new cho- 
ruses to the children, and this should be utilised to the 
full. Boys and girls are fond of singing, and truth will 
often wing its way home in the words of a hymn, not 
only to their own hearts but, later, to those of their 
parents. Care must be taken to see the words of the 
choruses are simple, easily understood, and adapted to 
the child’s life and outlook. Their background of 
thought and appeal should be ethical rather than doc- 
trinal. There is a world of difference between the 
types represented by the following examples, which are 
selected from two very different collections compiled 
for children’s meetings : 


(1) “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, 
To shine for Him each day, 
In every way to try to please Him 
At home, at school, at play.” 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 175 


(2) “I come third, I come third, 
Where God puts one in His Word, 
God comes first, my neighbours second 
IT come third.” 


‘3) “Nothing to pay, there’s nothing to pay, 
Straight is the gate, and narrow the way. 
Book on the up line, start off to-day, 
Glasgow to Glory, there’s nothing to pay.” 


(4) “My sins were as high as a mountain, 
They all disappeared in the fountain, 
He wrote my name down for a palace and crown, 
And now, praise His dear Name, I am free.” 


The two former contain eminently suitable messages 
for boys and girls, the two latter embody metaphors 
quite beyond their grasp, and are in the last degree un- 
suitable. 

The conduct of the meeting should, generally speak- 
ing, be in the hands of the missioner or speaker; but 
the minister, if present, should be invited to take part, 
and on no account must the impression be conveyed that 
he is being relegated to the background. The spirit of 
reverence must be explicit throughout the meeting, con- 
veyed rather by the whole attitude of the speaker than 
by any formal appeal or admonition, and the sense of 
reality must pervade the atmosphere if young minds are 
not to be alienated. There is perhaps nothing children 
hate so much as artificiality. 

Alike in his manner and message, the evangelist must 
realise that he is dealing with the most delicate and 
impressionable material. He is an artist working on the 


176 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


sensitive canvas of young life, and no touch of his 
brush can ever be altogether erased. He is a sculptor 
fashioning young souls according to the ideals and 
standards of Christ, and every stroke of the mallet 
counts. He is an ambassador—the representative of 
his Lord and Master—and his every action and word 
will be watched and weighed by extremely critical eyes 
and minds. On the way in which he presents Jesus 
Christ to these young lives more than he can ever know 
will depend. 

The observations one has to make about the message 
itself must necessarily be somewhat general, but they 
need be none the less valuable on that account. The 
background of the Missioner’s appeal must be the in- 
alienable right of every child to a place in the Kingdom 
of God, to his share of the Heavenly Father’s love and 
care, and to the enjoyment of all the privileges of Chris- 
tian inheritance and fellowship in virtue of his birth 
into a redeemed world. If the young heart is conscious 
of sin in word or thought or deed, if privilege is felt to 
have been forfeited, wrong decisions to have been taken 
and joy lost, then the tender forgiving love of Jesus 
must be presented; and the willingness and power of 
the Saviour, not only to pardon and restore, but to im- 
part His strength alike for the hour of temptation and 
of opportunity, and guidance for the whole of life, 
must be made clear. But at all costs care must be taken 
to avoid creating the impression that life is generated 
and cradled in sin and shadowed by guilt and condemna- 
tion from its very entrance into the world, and that only 
by the way of repentance and cleansing—by heartfelt 
conviction and catastrophic conversion—can young or 


of 
«. 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 177 


old come into the Kingdom. Such teaching is alto- 
gether alien to the spirit of the New Testament and 
does violence not only to the character of our Lord, 
but to the sensitive mind of the child. 

The evangelist who gets to know his audience will 
find many strange ideas and misconceptions in the 
minds of the children, and these he must do his best 
to remove. He will come across boys and girls who 
have been led to regard God as a sort of glorified de- 
tective, ever on the watch to observe a fall, and quick 
to punish the slightest lapse from rectitude. He will 
commonly meet with children who think of religion as 
something unnatural and strange, far removed from 
daily life and thought, and burdensome in the mean- 
ingless petty restrictions it imposes—necessary, per- 
haps, to take one to heaven, but little good for anything 
else. Patiently, lovingly—even humorously—he must 
set himself to break down prejudices and remove mis- 
understandings. He must avoid a doctrinal or dog- 
matic statement of Christianity totally unsuited to 
minds that have not reached the stage of conceptual 
thought, however necessary such credal statement may 
be for the fully developed intelligence. It is worse 
than useless for him “‘to cloud the child’s apprehension 
of Jesus by an attempt to explain His two-fold nature,” 
or to introduce him to the God of the catechism, or to 
the substitutionary theories of the theologian. In pre- 
senting the Christ of history and of experience to the 
child-mind he must beware of leaving the impression 
that Jesus is little more than a Hero to be admired, 
or a great Teacher and Wonder Worker. He must 
set forth Christ as both Saviour and Lord—as Master 


178 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


and Friend. Above all he must make it clear beyond 
question that religion is a matter of everyday life 
and conduct, affecting all one’s relations, inspiring and 
quickening mind and body and making for a full and 
rounded life—healthy, helpful and happy. He must 
reveal it as “determining the quality of work one does 
at school, the kind of game one plays, the sort of friend 
one proves.” 

It cannot be gainsaid that the message of Christ 
has been too often connected in the minds of the 
children with certain duties performed on Sundays, 
with distant rewards and punishments in a faraway 
heaven or hell, with certain denials and restraints, and 
with much that makes life irksome and unhappy. The 
idea has never dawned on many of their minds that to 
be a Christian is to enter on a life at once sweeter, 
happier and more wholesome, that it is not merely to 
gain the favour of God and enjoy the blessings of salva- 
tion, but to dedicate the whole life, with its expanding 
powers of mind and body, to the service and Kingdom 
of Jesus Christ, and to the help and redemption of one’s 
fellows. It is this last interpretation that appeals to 
the boy or girl entering on the adolescent stage. The 
sense of something big enough to demand all they are 
and have, and the knowledge of One Who is worthy 
of all their devotion and service—their passionate at- 
tachment and generous self-sacrifice—will make a tre- 
mendous appeal to boys and girls just entering their 
teens. 

What response to his message and appeal is the chil- 
dren’s evangelist to look for, and how is he to garner 
his harvest? Here, perhaps even more than anywhere 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 179 


else, tact and self-restraint, psychological knowledge 
and spiritual insight, and above all, sound practical com- 
mon-sense, are called for. Here golden opportunities 
may be lost, and here too good work may be sadly . 
marred. 

Should there be an after meeting—and, if so, what 
form should it take? Should there be an appeal for 
immediate decision, and an opportunity for open con- 
fession of Christ? These are momentous questions, 
and the answers will largely depend upon place and cir- 
cumstances, and on the type of man who is acting as 
leader or speaker. 

A strong case can be made out for the after-meeting, 
especially if it takes the form of an Instruction Class 
(or Classes), with the ages carefully graded, and tend- 
ency to emotionalism or undue suggestibility guarded 
against. There ought certainly to be some opportunity 
given for personal conference with the Missioner, but 
it is more than doubtful whether any pressing appeal / 
for immediate decision should be made (even in the”* 
after-meeting) unless one is dealing with adults, or ad- 
olescents beyond the age of 16. Any segregation of 
children into those who have decided and those who 
have not, or any intimation—or even suggestion—that 
those who do not respond to the appeal are thus guilty 
of rejecting Christ and refusing the Christian life, must 
be avoided. “To permit this,’ says Mr. Frank L. 
Brown, in discussing Graded Evangelism in the Sun- 
day School, “is the surest method of causing such a re- 
jection on the one hand, and of producing insincerity 
on the other. The sense of personal responsibility to 
God is necessary to intelligent conviction and decision, 


180 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


and this sense does not normally develop in strength 
till the end of the Junior period and the beginning of 
Adolescence. 

“Tf, after the address,’ suggests Rev. Lionel B. 
Fletcher, in an admirable chapter on “Evangelistic 
Work Among the Young,” in his recent book on Evan- 
gelism,* ‘the speaker will make it clear that he will 
be in an adjoining room when the meeting closes and 
will be glad to meet those who want to begin as young 
soldiers of Christ, children will be saved from any in- 
jurious element which might attach itself to an unin- 
telligent movement to the front of the church.’”’ There 
is sound practical wisdom in that suggestion, but per- 
haps the best method of all is that adopted by Messrs. 
Grieve and Pratt, the Young People’s Evangelists of 
the United Free Church of Scotland (and doubtless by 
others who share their convictions). These workers 
combine Instruction Classes for adolescents and adults 
with ample opportunity for interviews with old and 
young alike, and with the provision of a Letter Box 
into which communications of all kinds can be put. 

This Letter Box is made of stout cardboard and is 
displayed in a prominent position near the door of the 
church or hall. Its presence and purpose are duly inti- 
mated, and into it boys and girls are invited to drop 
letters expressing their appreciation of the meetings, 
voicing any questions they may have, and telling of 
blessing received. A special invitation is given to them 
to send in paintings of the illustrations they have’ seen 
on the blackboard, the easel or the screen. This is done 
with the double purpose of impressing the message on 


* The Effective Evangelist, by Lionel B. Fletcher. 


re 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 181 


the children’s minds and awakening the interest of their 
parents. In this way too, the Missioner gathers in- 
valuable information as to the kind of impression the 
children are carrying away from the meetings. 

The Letter Box proves a most popular and valuable 
adjunct to the work, often bringing hundreds of com- 
munications to the evangelist during a single fortnight’s 
effort. These come from people of all ages and classes. 
Adults write asking for interviews, and shy but hungry 
souls reveal their longing for the Bread of Life. Boys 
and girls write to tell how they are getting on at school 
—of their homes and holiday experiences, their little 
joys and sorrows, of what they have found most in- 
teresting and helpful in the meetings, and, best of all, 
of hearts and lives given to the Saviour. The writer 
has had the privilege of examining much of this corre- 
spondence and is convinced that most effective use could 
be made of this method in all types of evangelistic 
services and meetings. 

Almost equally as important as the mode of appeal is 
the question of “following up” the Mission. Here, 
minister and missioner should consult with one another 
as to the best means of conserving the fruits of the 
meetings, and of leading the boys and girls whose hearts 
have been touched by the Saviour into a strong and 
vigorous Christian discipleship. If the work is to be 
consolidated something must be done, and done at once, 
to insure the permanence of impressions made, and 
to relate the new interests and enthusiasms created to 
life in the home, the school and the church. It is just 
at this point that so much self-sacrificing and success- 
ful work has been vitiated in the past. The Church 


182 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


that makes no serious attempt to provide for the con- 
tinuance and completion of the work of the Mission will 
deservedly lose most of its fruits. 

There are many other types of evangelistic meetings 
for children than these that have been mentioned here. 
There is the Seaside Meeting of which Mr. Burgess 
has written ; there is Decision Day in the Sunday School 
with which Mr. Hayes has dealt so suggestively, and, 
among others, there is the informal type of meeting so 
dear to the heart of a boy, for which I would like to put 
in a plea.in closing. 

The late headmaster of the Leys School, Cambridge, 
pleads in one of his books * for meetings for public 
school boys held outside the chapel, on the ground that 
greater informality is possible, and that “illustrations 
of a homely and even humorous type can be used which 
would be barred in school chapel by the boys’ sense of 
the fitting no less than by the masters’.”’ In his descrip- 
tion of this kind of meeting these significant sentences 
occur, “Some of the most profitable of such meetings 
have been held when the number attending has made it 
necessary for them to sit all over the floor. . . . There 
is a value in so treating the affairs of the soul that they 
may be seen to be not incongruous with happy and 
wholesome laughter.” 

The signal success in peiching and winning boys 
which has attended the summer camps and seaside 
missions—and many of the winter meetings—of the 
Children’s Special Service Mission, is to be traced in no 
small measure to the recognition of this truth—that 
your normal healthy boy is more at home in such a 


*The Unfolding Life, by W. T. A. Barber. 


CONDUCT OF CHILDREN’S MEETINGS 183 


gathering than in a formal meeting, and that a homely 
talk to a crowd of fellows, squatting at their ease on the 
floor of some suitable room or small hall—a talk in- 
stinct with genuine humour, and lit up by personal. 
experience—may do far more to solve the problem of 
winning the boy than any number of evangelistic meet- 
ings of the more conventional type. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 
AMONG CHILDREN 


ONE OF THE EDITORS * 


In a chapter such as this it is necessary that our terms 
should be defined with some degree of accuracy. If 
our survey is to have any scientific or spiritual value 
whatever its limits must be clearly indicated. How 
wide a connotation are we prepared to give to the term 
child? What exactly do we mean by evangelistic work 
among children? On what basis do we intend to esti- 
mate the fruits of such work? ‘These questions are 
fundamental to our study and must be answered forth- 
with. It would largely nullify the value of our investi- 
gations to take for granted that the reader is already 
satisfied in his own mind as to the interpretation likely 
to be put on these terms here. 


In Chapter V Dr. Mark divides the pre-adolescent 
period of life into three stages—infancy, childhood, 
and boyhood or girlhood—that covered by the term 
child being from six to nine years of age. Such a 
classification is not without its value for the purpose 
he has in view, but no such limitation of childhood 
years can be accepted for this chapter. Here we are 

* My colleague prefers that I should take full responsibility for 


this chapter. 
184 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 185 


to regard and speak of as children all who have 
reached the stage of self-consciousness, and are under 
twelve or thirteen years of age. The scope allowed by 
such a definition is a fairly wide one, but nothing less 
would be consistent with the purpose or spirit of this 
book. | 

In discussing the results of evangelistic work among 
children we have no thought of confining our attention 
to Special Missions, or even to religious meetings with 
a definitely evangelistic aim. Our concern is with the 
whole work of the Home, the Sunday School and the 
Church, in leading boys and girls to Christ, in bringing 
them to a life decision, and to the consciousness of 
personal relationship with God. 

It is when we come to discuss the fruits of this work 
that the need for definition becomes most pressing. 
How are we to judge of the presence of a vital work of 
the Spirit of God inthe hearts and lives of boys and 
girls? By what standard are we to gauge their profes- 
sion? For what manifestations of spiritual experience 
are we to look? To what evidences of character and 
conduct, of speech and behaviour, are we to direct our 
attention? And, above all, at what point in the spiritual 
development of the unfolding life can we say with 
confidence that any change observable gives promise of 
permanence ? 

Very different answers to these questions will be 
given by Christian men and women to-day than would 
have been offered forty or fifty years ago. The applica- 
tion of the category of evolution to the whole of the 
developing life, and the recognition that the individual 
largely lives through the early experiences of the race 


186 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


in childhood—manifesting their characteristics, and 
revealing their attitude of mind, their interests and 
ambitions, and even, perhaps, their religious concep- 
tions—have altered our whole outlook on the question 
of what is normal and natural for childhood. Above 
all they have led us to guard against such artificial types 
of piety as used to be held up as the standard for grow- 
ing boys and girls. 

Just how far we have advanced in this direction 
becomes apparent when we turn to study the writings 
of the leaders of the Evangelical Movement of the 18th, 
and even the early 19th, century. Then the child was 
expected to pass through exactly the same experience, 
and to manifest the same interests, as the adult. Con- 
ceived in sin, depraved in mind and heart, guilty and 
condemned from earliest years in the sight of an angry 
God, he must experience the agony of conviction and 
remorse, be visited by darkness and doubt, and finally 
arrive at conversion and confession. The new life on 
which he then entered was expected to manifest itself 
in long prayers, religious meditation, the use of pious 
phraseology, and a grave concern for the welfare of 
the human race. “Too often,” says one writer, “in the 
good books written for the young was the pious child 
a hectic unnatural creature whom we foredoomed to 
an early death.” 

Even so great a man as John Wesley was dominated 
by this conception, and lent the weight of his authority 
to these ideas. One has only to read his Journals to 
see this, and to become aware of the gulf that separates 
his age and standpoint from ours. Here are some of 
the cases he quotes with evident approval. (We quote 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 187 


from Dr. Barber’s book “The Unfolding of Life,” 
which will be found most suggestive at this point. ) 

“A child three years old was given much to pray- 
ing aloud to God. He called to his companion, ‘Polly, 
we must pray. Leave your doll. Let us kneel down.’ 
He died in peace a year or two later.”’ | 

“Richard Hutchinson, four years old, began much 
to talk of God. From that time he never played nor 
laughed, but was as serious as one of three-score. He 
constantly reproved any that cursed or swore or spoke 
indecently in his hearing, and frequently mourned over 
his brother, who was two or three years older, saying, 
‘I fear my brother will go to hell for he does not love 
God.’ He died of small-pox, saying, ‘I will go home, 
now I will go to my Father.’ ” 

“Again, a child who died at two and a half spoke 
exceedingly plain, but very seldom, and then only a 
few words. She could not bear any to behave in a light 
or unseemly manner. If any offered to kiss or touch 
her she said, ‘I do not like you.’ If her brothers or 
sisters spoke angrily or behaved triflingly, she sharply 
reproved them or tenderly exhorted them. If she spoke 
too sharply she humbled herself, not content until she 
was forgiven. She was especially fond of hearing and 
singing the hymn, ‘Abba, Father, hear my cry.’”’ 

Having adopted the maxim of his Moravian friends 
that “If a boy play when he is a boy, he will play 
when he is a man,” Wesley strove to keep the boys in 
his Kingwood School from games of all kinds. 

It has to be admitted that there are still with us not 
a few who share Wesley’s point of view, and who would 
regard the type of youthful piety embodied in these 


188 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


illustrations as altogether admirable and desirable—who 
would, in fact, be distinctly inclined to doubt the value 
of any other type. Their ideal of a “soundly con- 
verted” boy has not inaptly been described as “A little 
old man, ostensibly carrying about his Bible, attending 
prayer meetings more than playing fields, cultivating 
a grave face, developing a faculty for quoting texts 
and relating experiences.” In short—a precocious little 
theologian, and in no sense a child disciple! 

What wise parents and teachers—and in fact edu- 
cated Christian men and women everywhere, who have 
faced these problems—look for to-day is something 
very different from this. It is the simple, childlike con- 
sciousness of personal relationship with Christ—the 
deepening realisation of what Divine worship means, 
and the desire to love, serve and obey the Saviour in a 
natural childlike way. It is further the realisation of 
His interest and help in all the concerns of childhood, 
and the knowledge that happy and healthful games and 
wholesome fun are as much to His mind as to theirs. 
The girl who loves Christ is no longer expected to be- 
come a woman before her time, but a purer, sweeter and 
more lovable girl, And the boys, while becoming in 
every way better and brighter, are expected to remain 
boys, and not to become men all at once! 

There is however one very real danger against which 
we must guard. A healthy reaction from older and 
cruder views of the religious experience natural to 
childhood must not be allowed to carry us too far. 
There is at the present time an unfortunate tendency to 
disparage anything in the nature of vital religious ex- 
perience in the pre-adolescent period, and to regard as 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 189 


purely ephemeral any fruits of evangelistic work among 
children. . 

The dangers that lurk in such a conception have been 
indicated in previous chapters, while the lack of spir- 
itual insight, and even of truly scientific thinking, 
which such an attitude of mind reveals requires’ little 
demonstration. Abundant evidence has been gathered 
in recent years in the field of Religious Psychology to 
show that a very large number of Christian people date 
the decisive and determining experiences of their spir- 
itual life to the years of childhood, and to substantiate 
the claim by Starbuck that while conversions appear to 
attain their maximum at 16 years of age, they begin as 
early as 7 or 8, increasing gradually in number till 10 or 
11, and then falling away again for a period. Whether 
“conversion” is the right word to use for pre-adolescent 
experience may be open to question, but the facts im- 
plied in that statement cannot easily be gainsaid. 

As to the apparent transitoriness of the religious im- 
pressions and experiences of childhood, the testimony 
of Horace Bushnell is well worth bearing in mind. 
The author of Christian Nurture is not likely to be 
accused of a bias in favour of evangelism, so that his 
words may be the more impressive. Speaking of chil- 
dren who have manifested some sign of spiritual ex- 
perience in early years, Bushnell says, “Perhaps they 
will go through a rough mental struggle at some future 
day and seem to others and themselves there to have 
entered on a Christian life. And yet it may be true 
that there was still some root of right principle estab- 
lished in their childhood, which is here only quickened 
and developed, as when Christians of a mature age are 


190 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


revived in their piety after a period of spiritual lethargy, 
for it is conceivable that regenerate character may exist 
before it is fully and firmly developed.” The fact that 
there is, in many cases, something resembling a recon- 
version in the transition from the simple naive religion 
of childhood to that of the larger world of adolescence, 
and finally to the full religious self-consciousness of the 
adult man or woman, must not be taken as discrediting 
in any way the earlier spiritual experiences. 

What sources of information are open to us for such 
a study as we have in mind in this chapter? What lines 
of evidence may be regarded as admissible for our pur- 
pose? To what quarters can we look for reliable data 
on which to base our conclusions? 

Three sources of information suggest themselves as 
at once valid and valuable. There is first of all the 
evidence of children themselves as to the difference 
Christ has made in their lives, and the reality of the 
new experience on which they have entered; there is 
further the testimony of adults as to the spiritual de- 
cision and determining influences of their own child- 
hood days, and there is, finally, the evidence of on- 
lookers—whether parents, teachers or ministers—as to 
the impressions made on their minds by close contact 
with children who have been the subject of deep re- 
ligious experience. 

The evidence of children themselves must be regarded 
as having a value all its own. However we may inter- 
pret their testimony the fact remains that they alone 
can speak with intimate personal knowledge on the sub- 
ject, and have therefore a title to be heard. From their 
letters and conversation a great deal of information 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 191 


may be gathered as to the reality and depth of their con- 
victions, and the way in which they ciate their re- 
lationship to Christ. 

Some of these letters reveal a tendency to just these 
types of piety which we have been led to deprecate. 

The boy who writes, “I used to be a slave of Satan, 
but with Jesus on my side I will be able to enter the 
Door and be under the blood of the Lamb. I will try 
to be good after this and perhaps Jesus will let me enter 
His Kingdom” has got somewhat mixed in his ideas, 
and is evidently suffering from a surfeit of incompletely 
digested theological teaching. Just how far he has got 
in personal experience is hard to say. 

The child whose assurance that—‘There is nothing 
that can give peace of mind to the sinner but the blood 
that was shed on Calvary”—is quoted approvingly by 
the Missioner, is to be pitied rather than blamed for a 
precocity that may very well develop into priggishness. 

Some of the testimonies are good as far as they go, 
but suggest either that the presentation of Christ to the 
child mind has not beén adequate, or that it has not 
been made sufficiently clear, as when a number of 
children write that they “intend to follow the Great 
Captain” and a boy assures the Missioner that “Jesus 
is the best Scoutmaster,’ and that he will not be 
ashamed to own himself a member of His troop. These 
ideas are good up to a point, but they hardly go far 
enough, and they suggest the possibility of early dis- 
appointment on both sides, unless the decision made is 
related to a fuller content of experience. Some are 
altogether delightful, a few of these being appended 
to show their simplicity and childlikeness. 


192 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


“Only a few lines,” writes one, “to let you know by 
your aid I have fallen in love with Jesus.” 

“T always thought I loved Christ,” a girl confesses, 
“but when I saw Him being beaten on the tree for our 
sake, it was then true love entered my heart.” 

“T am writing this little letter,’ says another, “telling 
you that I have Jesus in my heart, and I will not let 
Him out!’ 

“From the many pictures you have shown me,” 
writes a boy who has evidently been thinking deeply, 
“T have decided to be on the side of Christ.” 

“T have belonged to Jesus a few years now,’ one 
writes; and the testimony of another is still more sig- 
nificant and striking. It is that of a girl of 12 who 
writes,— 

“TI gave my heart to Jesus. when I first learned to 
pray. That was when I was two!’ 

Most touching of all are the cases in which a father 
or mother is implicated. 

“Last Friday evening,” writes one girl, “Mummy 
and I made up our minds to trust Jesus. She is to help 
me, and she says I am to help her.” 

Surely such a letter as this holds out great promise 
for the future! Before we pass to speak of the testi- 
mony of adults as to the permanence of their early re- 
ligious experiences and decisions, it may be well to 
append a few notes on the testimony of children from 
one whose wide experience and brilliant scholarship 
give him the right to speak. 

“It 1s natural,” says Dr. W. T. A. Barber,* “that 
the child’s religion should be expressed in anthropo- 


*The Unfolding of Life, by W. T. A. Barber. 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 193 


morphic terms, his heaven in terms of earth. That 
simply means that he recognises no divorce between 
the two. . . . Along with the idealism which accepts 
the unseen, sees angels in the sky and in the garden 
alike, talks to Jesus as if He still has a knee for chil- 
dren to climb on, there is a sturdy sense of the practical 
which judges justly between good and bad. The child, 
like the grown-up world, does not believe in a faith 
which is not shown by works. Truth, unselfishness, 
good temper, self-control, lovingness, are recognised 
not merely as parts of obedience to a parent, but as in 
themselves good, and are quickly related to the Higher 
powers. The battle between good and evil is early 
recognised, the experience of defeat and conquest fully 
understood. The thought of Jesus as ready to help is 
quickly grasped, and the habit of prayer to Him is quite 
natural.” 

A second line of evidence suggested as admissible for 
our study is the testimony of adults as to the per- 
manence of their early religious impressions. Nowhere 
perhaps, is this more striking than in the case of Min- 
isters and Missionaries of the Church, suggesting that 
those who have come earliest to a personal knowledge 
of Christ, have also been foremost in the dedication of 
their lives to His service. Polycarp, the aged martyr 
of the Early Church, has left it on record that he be- 
came a follower of Christ at the age of 9. Matthew 
Henry gives the age of 10 as the date of his conversion. 
Isaac Watt assures us that he found the Saviour at 9, 
while Jonathan Edwards, the great master of the New 
England pulpit, dates the beginning of his Christian 
life back to the age of 7. Out of 71 corporate mem- 


194 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


bers of the American Board of Missions, 19, according 
to Dr. Goodell, stated that they were converted at so 
early an age that they were unable to remember it, 
where 34 were led to Christ before they were 14. 
Twenty-five foreign missionaries, on furlough in this 
country, were discussing their work together when the 
conversation turned on the formative influence of the 
early years of life, Mr. Carey Bonner records, and it 
was found that 24 out of the 25 had dedicated them- 
selves to their life work before the age of 14. What 
holds good of ministers and missionaries would seem 
to hold good also of distinguished servants of Christ 
in other fields. It was the unwavering testimony of 
the Great Lord Shaftesbury that he could unhesitatingly 
affirm that his spiritual life began at seven years of 
age, under the influence of his nurse, who had the joy 
of leading him to Christ. 

These impressive facts could be multiplied almost 
indefinitely if space permitted and occasion required, 
and many a moving story could be told of what a 
childish decision came to mean in later life, and how 
far an early religious impression carried. The Editors 
of this book date the beginning of their own Christian 
discipleship to a memorable evening in childhood, when 
one was ten years of age and the other seven; and 
among their friends in University life and their col- 
leagues in evangelistic work they number not a few who 
trace their decision for Christ back to quite as early 
a date. 

In concluding this line of evidence, it may be well to 
give the testimony of one whose long and varied evan- 
gelistic and ministerial experience entitle him to be 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 195 


heard. ‘““The most surprising evidences of the perma- 
nent results of child conversion,” says Rev. Lionel B. 
Fletcher, in a book to which reference has already been 
made,* “are to be seen in any meeting where those 
present who were converted under the age of 12 years 
are asked to hold up their hands. Generally the pro- 
portion is so astonishing that any sane man must won- 
der how it is that people will continue to theorise in- 
stead of acting on the evidence of their own eyesight.”’ 

Finally, we have the evidence of parents, teachers 
and ministers as to the worth and permanence of the 
work done among the young—evidence based on wide 
experience and intimate personal knowledge. Here, 
again, one or two examples will have to suffice, and if 
we select the ministerial testimonies in preference to 
the others it is because they are more comprehensive 
in their survey, and more immediately applicable to the 
purpose of this book. We select as examples, three 
very different types of men—C. H. Spurgeon, Dr. W. 
L. Watkinson and Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon—two of 
whom are still with us to substantiate what they have 
written, and to attest its up-to-dateness. 

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, on one occasion, made 
this remarkable statement—and whatever we may think 
of his theological views, his experience gives him the 
right to speak—“T will say broadly,” averred the great 
Baptist preacher, “that I have more confidence in the 
spiritual life of the children that I have received into 
this Church than I have in the spiritual condition of 
the adults thus received. I will go even further than 
that. I have usually found a clearer knowledge of the 


* The Effective Evangelist, by Lionel B. Fletcher. 


196 WINNING THE CHILDREN FOR CHRIST 


Gospel, and a warmer love to Christ in the child con- 
vert than in the adult convert. I will even astonish 
you still more by saying that I have met with a deeper 
spiritual experience in children of 10 or 12 than I have 
in certain persons of 50 or 60.” 

Alongside that may be put the experiences of one of 
our foremost modern Congregationalist ministers, Rev. 
J. Morgan Gibbon of Stamford Hill, London. Some 
years ago Mr. Gibbon was led to hold a children’s 
mission in his own church, and in a little book, Drawing 
the Net, or Holding the Young for Christ, he gives 
some account of the work together with the addresses 
he delivered. For three nights only special addresses 
were given to the young people, those who responded 
being gathered into instruction classes. At the close 
of these, all who desired to make public confession of 
Christ were asked to hand in their names. Over 70 
did so, and were received into Church membership at 
the end of the year. “To-day,” says Mr. Gibbon, writ- 
ing in 1915, “they are among the most faithful, earnest 
and consistent members of the Church.” 

Dr. W. L. Watkinson, the veteran Methodist min- 
ister, is one of the most widely known preachers and 
writers in the Churches. This is his plea: “We instruct 
our children and seek to encourage them, but are sur- 
prised if they evidence anything like a religious ex- 
perience. A child may not understand theology, but it 
can enjoy religion. Go to a child at once with a spir- 
itual appeal and expect the spiritual effect. Do not 
think of their need of experience. Give them a chance, 
and you will be surprised to see the wonderful fruit 
they will bear.” 


THE FRUITS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK 197 


The discussion in which we have been engaged in 
this chapter may be closed—and the whole book fitly 
concluded—with this admonition :— 

“Where early motions of the religious life are found 
among children it becomes the whole object of re- 
ligious education to keep them healthy, foster and 
train them to completeness and fulfilment.” Only by 
this whole-hearted co-operation of the educationalist 
and the evangelist can we hope to succeed in our task of 
Winning the Children for Christ. 


THE END 





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